social

On the 2018 Day of Labor, many were worried. No one can deny digitalization affects work. Artificial intelligence greatly changes professions and whole branches. Well-paid jobs become scarcer. Rebuilding the social state seems necessary. Capitalism's blind flight through history is ending.

The market accepts and rejects like a Calvinist God. The market only promises itself. Its highest good is the economic boom. The market theocracy makes this side into something otherworldly. The cult of money and the commodity eclipses all its predecessors.

The rise of unemployment worldwide has reached unparalleled dimensions. In 1999, 700 million were affected. The neoliberal economic theory promotes the prosperity of the rich, not society as a whole. Profit maximization is often the only goal. Reducing working hours is vital.

The systemic reasons for the crisis are more important than a sudden fall in prices. Stocks are held on average 22 seconds, not 6 months or ten years. Real-capitalism is a plus-sum game. Financial capitalism is a zero-sum game.

The capital surpluses are a constant source of new speculative waves and maneuvers. The crisis of state finances is mainly a crisis of tax refusal. The elites shifted the tax burden from businesses and high incomes to consumer taxes and fees.

Phenomena like Trump and the new nationalisms confirm the actuality of the theory of the authoritarian personality articulated by Wilhelm Reich, Erich Fromm, and Theodor Adorno. By their structure, capitalist social media encourage narcissism and are not social media

Like food, clothing, health, and education, housing is an elementary need. On'e apartment is a place of retreat of the private person, a protective- and creative space of inviolable identity, Long-term low-interest housing tax credits & SROs, are alternatives to indifference.

Modern politics must fight against excessiveness and inequality. All progress narratives have worn out. The cake will not become larger. The perspective of conviviality aims at abundance, not at tightening belts..

Reducing working hours is an attractive scenario, an optimistic picture of a possible future of society. Less than 2% of German workers labor in agriculture, down from 40% in the 19th century. The future of work is person-related work. The state must intervene with subsidies.

The market can only fulfill its technical function when its rules and mechanisms are politically fixed and governmentally monitored...Adam Smith's theory has nothing to do with neoliberals and market radicals who preach the sleek state, low taxes for businesses and low wages.

There is no future with present-day capitalism. Capitalism stands for a movement of endless profit-making. Only a radical breach with the capitalist accumulation dynamic can nurture the hope of a reasonably tolerable future for human civilization on this planet.

Public service guarantees and influences the living conditions of our society and has a proven tradition in Germany for over 100 years. Privatizations have mainly led to private oligopolies. Corporations evade their responsibilities and expect intact infrastructure.

At the Palestine Digital Activism Forum, representatives from both Google and Facebook faced a crowd that demanded to know why the two companies cooperate with Israel’s attempts at silencing Palestinians.

Refused sharing and rediscovery of sharing are signs of this time. "This economy kills." So Pope Francis judges socio-economic conditions. Taxing the rich is vital. With additional revenue, workers would not feel threatened by immigrants

The extension of martial law in Mindanao to the end of 2018 by Congress comes as no surprise to Laban ng Masa (Fight of the Masses). Over the last year and a half, the Senate and the House of Representatives have been completely transformed into pliant tools of President Rodrigo Duterte, with the vast majority of the members of these two chambers surrendering their remaining shred of self-respect to become accomplices to Malacanang’s authoritarian agenda.

Thanks to everyone who resisted the GOP tax giveaway! Unlike the security state, the constitutional state should mean compromises, negotiations, concessions, and countermeasures to reverse exploding inequality and precarious work.

The US is experiencing a dramatic deterioration of its public health. President Trump is now trying to make the ACA "implode" through decrees. The insured are reacting to their higher premiums. A series of states have filed actions against the decrees.

Slavery lives in modern forms like debt slavery. Capitalist society stands in opposition to human rights and does not only realize human rights. Capitalism cannot realize essential demands from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Capital is a powerful machine of commodification. Since the capitalist market economy became autonomous and "separated" from society, capital has only functioned according to its own laws, the impersonal laws of profit and accumulation.

Since 2008, crisis was the defining political theme. "No one should be fooled about the majority will of the population regarding taming wiled finance capitalism. The system could only be bailed out from collapse with taxpayer guarantees." (Habermas 2010).

Our tax system p[romotes private wealth and impoverishes the community. Even if no one pays them gladly, most are aware taxes int he interest of the community are sensible. "Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society" (Oliver Wendell Holmes, former Supreme Court justice).

Contracting debts exploded under neoliberalism since the 1980s - unlike the state debts in the Keynesian era from the 1950s to the 1970s - and produced s structural debt bondage for the overwhelming majority.

“He wanted to plan to start a huge fire in an area near where he lived and he specifically mentioned the Berkeley Hills as a potential target,” Hasib told the court in December. “That was our first indication that we were dealing with someone in the Bay Area.”

The narcissist knows only two states: the absolute sense of powerlessness and omnipotence fantasies. Socialization cannot be left to an unconscious process since society's values are increasingly dysfunctional.

Corporate profits explode while investments stagnate.Social housing declines with privatization. According to neoliberal theory, higher profits lead to grater investments and more jobs. In truth, higher profits lead to more use of tax havens and companies buying back their stock.

Trump's gigantic tax cuts will only benefit the rich. Revenue losses of six trillion dollars are expected for the first decade after the Trumpian tax cuts start. Trump sells the illusion that the old order can be restored.

Our guest is Dr. Martin Donohoe, adviser to Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility and author of "Public Health and Social Justice". The topic is "Science in the New Dark Age". What is the New Dark Age? What is science? How has science been attacked in the past?

The European Union is at a crossroads. The reason lies in the neoliberal redistribution policy favoring capital incomes over many years. "Mass unemployment intensified and was not ended in Europe. Millions of those with work are in precarious working conditions."

The escalator is going down and no longer up as in the "social modern age." The social trend drives toward precariousness and the accompanying social descent. Social institutions and securities are being cleared away.

A high state share in the economy, developed social states and readiness to intervene actively and anti-cyclically prevent falling into a depression. Trump's demonizing regulation, Medicaid, public schools, Head Start, Meals on Wheels, taxation and democracy must be resisted

The majority of the world's population doesn't want to know anything about globalized neoliberal capitalism anymore. Many millions are dying in the consequences. The political institutions are extorted by financial elites and their media aids. The interests of big owners of capital dominate.

Trust in the "invisible hand" is a religious exercise ensuring a rule over people that is destructive and fatal. Christians and Marxists wage a common struggle against the spirit, logic, and praxis of the false money-god and its servants.

Millions of people count on Social Security for their survival. Over 60 percent of seniors rely on Social Security payments for at least half their income. Approximately one-third of seniors rely on Social Security payments for at least 90 percent of their income.

Macro-economic and ecological connections are simply ignored with the concentration on short-term profit. The planned reduction of corporate taxes from the current 35% to 15 or 20% recalls the Laffer-curve as the basis of Reagan's fiscal policy error.

The state should represent the public interest and yet private or special interests are in the driver's seat. Trump's proposed 2018 budget is a sledgehammer with cuts to Meals-on-Wheels, school lunches, WIC food assistance, National Institute for Health, EPA, PBS and Legal Services

The rulers integrate the ruled in their "hegemony." Our essential task is conquering power for the working class. I believe life means taking sides. Indifference is apathy, parasitism, cowardice and iws the opposite of life.

This March 2017 in Honduras, its now come up to one year since indigenous activist Berta Caceres was murdered. There's a summary on the info out there who's arrested, who's not, and the links to US school of the americas of two involved in this crime. On roles of local corruption and international finance and the news on these. On dangerous smear campaigns and who they are targetting now. Also in March, community radio journalist received death threat. Another radio correspondent received death threat too, of Radio Progreso. A copinh community radio got attacked. A human rights defendered arrested 'by mistake'. Political cleaning contracts. And more unionised melon workers fired.

The basic income corrects the distribution effects of the labor market. It takes something from the higher paid to give to those who earn little or nothing. A leftist fights for a just social system. Robots and artificial intelligence replace human labor.

Neoliberalism seems to create "clothes no one can see" when it mystifies the market and competition and uses the austerity-model, the location-model and the adjustment-imperative or extortion to turn economics into nature.

With the term "no alternatives," come-of-age citizens who don't join the mainstream press are incapacitated, stamped as troublemakers and not taken seriously. Democracy is not sought any more in a divided country, divided between those above and those below.

The Brexit vote and the American presidential election have dramatically accelerated the crises of classical neoliberal policy. The exit from neoliberalism can only succeed in a social movement and cannot only be a matter of a government or of the parties.

The economic crisis calls for social-democratic answers. The fading mass purchasing power (in Germany) is due to the increasing inequality of income and wealth. Deregulation promotes social problems like precariousness and greater income inequality.

A society of social descent, precariouisness and polarization has emerged out of the society of ascent and social integration. The modern age continues developing but backward. The social state, is a de-commodifying institution since it socializes risks.

What appears here is another form of democracy, without the constitutional state and without opposition. Trump could operate with enemy declarations. Today Donald Trump is a radicalized Nixon. Democracy is always endangered and never given as a present.

In Trumponomics, falling tax rates for businesses should increase tax revenues. When businesses do not invest in an under-financed infrastructure, the tax gifts lead to lower stater spending and higher stater debts at the end.

Tony Judt and William Beveridge were great progressives and crusaders for the social state. In the US, the middle class benefited enormously in the postwar years from subsidized housing and subsidized education. We appear to have lost the capacity to question the present.

'Like the anti-Marcos resistance 4 decades back, the only certainty members of the anti-fascist front can count on is that they’re doing the right thing. And that, for some, is a certainty worth dying for'

Neoliberalism turns the world upside down so egoism, avarice, enrichment and ruthlessness become virtues and solidarity, sharing, and the social state become pre-modern threats to the right to absolute free property.

The most common myths start from the tax state that burdens the economy, the housework ordered by the state (save,save,save) to the Schwabian housewife prescribing the austerity creed. Politics must tend to every need of capital as a scared doe and therefore lower taxes.

Timocracy-rule of the propertied-threatens to replace democracy. The large majority is blocked from political participation and from forming their social future-unlike what was intended in the model of the majority principle in democracy.

Profit-making is not profit-maximizing. From the magic word profit-mongering is derived the absurd unequal distribution of wealth, cheating of consumers, the exploitation of workers and ultimately the abolition of democracy. An invisible hand makes business profit into common good

Markets are human inventions. Today's neoliberal economic dogma creates myths that strengthen the most powerful, most greedy, and most short-term economic actors and undermines the normal longings of people.Structures must change

Finance capitalism and Citizens United turn life, language and democracy upside down as the $150 million given by Wall Street to Hillary Clinton fall under the rubric "social engagement." With these theses, Franz Segbers emphasizes the social state as the foundation of democracy.

Elections today have one thing in common: they don't change anything. Pseudo-battles dominate in which the actors are intensely focused on evading the burning questions and diverting the electorate from the real causes of problems..

With his 1956 book "The Power Elite," C. Wright Mills put the democratic character of the US to the test. Despite formal democratic structures, a power elite formed that suspends democratic processes. Real power starts from a political directorate. In truth, only small circles have power

Today's growth critics speak of the necessity of a post-growth society, a "renunciation society" or at least of a "green" capitalist model... A political transformation process is necessary. The economist John Maynard Keynes dreamt of a time when his grandchildren would only have 15hr wk.

Hillary Clinton's and Donald Trump's economic plans are too simplistic. Innovations and ideas are lacking. Many people despair. Washington did not always ignore the middle. FDR's New Deal built 165K public buildings.

Middle-class democracy only knows formal political equality. Rule over public opinion grows out of the dominance of capital. The alternative is authoritarian capitalism or solidarity democracy. Resistance is the command of the hour.

There are many scandals and injustices, for example that wealth concentration in Austria and the EU is increasing. However, the debate is again about the "unemployed unwilling to work" instead of about the widening gap.

Robots and algorithms are ready to automate many activities like the manufacturing robot Baxter... John Maynard Keynes dreamt of a future in which the work week of his grandchidren would by only 15 hours.

We must make crucial changes and need new approaches. Soon we willnot crate bad jobs but no jobs if the developments of 3D-printers, autonomous cars and further automation continue. Technical solutions will suddenly make countless people unemployed.

Neoliberalism and finance market capitalism encourage creating money out of thin air, exploding inequality, precarious work and environmental destruction. Wages are not only a cost factor but an important demand factor leading to either investments or social blight.

It’s enough to read just a few lines of the bourgeois press to get an idea of ​​what will happen after the failed coup of 15 July: “The iron fist of Erdogan after the failed coup in Turkey: I am ready to reinstate the death penalty. 8000 police officers were suspended, opponents were stripped naked and hog-tied. The European Union: If executions resume, Turkey will not enter Europe“(1).

The social state can on ly fulfill expectations when financed on a broad and just basis. The social state must be adjusted to do justice to the pressing challenges.."The social state is the greatest cultural achievement in the 20th century"

Neoliberalism demands reeducation for its implementation like command socialism. The neoliberal view of the person is exemplified by the figure of the Homo Oeconomicus and is the antipole of the socialist person. All persons are entrepreneurs of themseves.

The elevator effect is not true any more. This changed from the 1990s. People no longer move up together. A society of descent, precariousness and polarization has come ou9t of the society of social ascent. Ascents and descents have a collective and an individual dimension.

The Anarchist Radio Berlin presents the "No Borders" project of the video collective "Sur Negro"!
'No Borders, Social Struggles across the world' (Sin Fronteras, La lucha social a través del mundo) is the name of a web series presenting experiences of social organizations and anti-capitalist resistance in different regions of the world. Its special focus lies on anti-authoritarian practices within social movements.

Cooperation and competition strengthen each other. Creating a non-profit or cooperative housing sector is the only remedy to gentrification and commodification as rental prices go through the roof. Housing often mutates from a human and social necessity to a speculative asset.

The extensive privatizations of the last 15 years have contributed to a market radicalization. Privatization was the door opener for the growing influence of financial market logic in housing. Developing a cooperative or nonprofit sector is a necessary and feasible alternative.

The Works Progress Administration created 651K miles of highway, 124K bridges, 8K parks and 125K public buildings including 41K schools. In the US of Amnesia, corporate subsidies are called public necessities and public welfare unnecessary
Orwell warned us of this inversion of language.

The bad news is that there are more inconvenient truths. Climate change is present, not future. Globalization and protection of the atmosphere do not go together. Climate policy has a past. Economic profit dominance always has a priority over climate protection.

Knowledge enables people to interpret reality. Metaphors and pictures give things a new meaning and can change reality. Capital isn't so frightened and isn't the same as a deer. The financial crisis is compared to a thunderstorm that is not man-made.

In 2007 and 2008 the US housing market almost completely collapsed. The crisis was brought about by a combination of state- and market failures. Extensive deregulation and violation of the liability principle were jointly responsible.

The common good is abused. The struggle against tax havens is a struggle for the rule of law and democracy. Apple, Google, Amazon, Boeing and GE shift tens of billions to tax havens. According to a 2013 article, one building in Delaware has 285,000 mailbox firms.

The use of property is only legitimate within the limits of the public interest. Whoever takes a risk must bear it and be liable for the losses. The state has the political task of laying down effective rules for risk assessment, liability and providing transparency. Distributive battles intensify.

Vital and Need-to-Know information is being reposted from pacificainexile.org here to inform all KPFK donors, sponsors, stakeholders, listeners and those who care about this Pacifica Radio Station's doing.

Classical working conditions and social securities dissolve. Ulrich Beck speaks of this world as a world risk society that will be marked by risky freedoms. To counter this, he develops the vision of a citizen society. How can the state compensate for the loss of taxes through paid work?

"Capital is the only god that the whole world knows, sees, touches, smells, tastes and excites all our senses. It is the only god that doesn't encounter any atheists" (Paul Lafargue's little known genial satire "Religion of Capital" from 1887.

“The time of cheap and abundant energy comes to the end. It is the beginning of the transition of the fossil era to a post-fossil age, a transition which will be in the same measure fundamental and decisive as it was the by fossils imprinted industrial revolution of about more than 200 years ago”.1

Neoliberalism tells the poor and weak that they are responsible for their misery. The true extent of social poverty barely reaches the public. A re-feudalization bomb rages and investors seek privatizing the public education system. People are atomized. Fragmentation is intentional.

This crisis is only another warning shot of the current economic system and offers a window of opportunity to leave behind the neoliberal path of development taken since the end of the 1970s. The root of the problem is the economic model based on growth and exploitation of nature.

Capitalism is not running so well. Is this because people are judged wrongly with misguided models? Don't competition and cooperation strengthen each other? Why is the SF-condo model praised to the skies and the Vancouver BC- community center model scorned as unrealistic?

Bernie Sanders is the candidate of young voters and sparks a movement in the social media. Sanders is the man of the people and Clinton is the woman of big money. Clinton compares Putin with Hitler. Sanders urges a diplomatic solution of problems. Who is the radical?

Two key ingredients have been essential for achieving positive results. Firstly, it is necessary to have a partner in government willing to listen and invest in housing. But equally important, activism at a local level is needed to mobilize knowledge and initiative to propose and develop projects...

An unequal distribution of income paralyzes the whole economy... Redistribution from top to bottom in a national economy ultimately depends on which social groups can enforce their interests more strongly.

The neoliberal rollback has created growing instabilities. An advancing process of de-democratization and social re-feudalization is connected with the rise of the new "super-rich." Piketty warned of the growing inequality between rich and poor.

Neoliberalism as a movement and ideology is a world of ideas where egoism and personal responsibiilty are celebrated, the social is faded out and no place exists for solidarity and social balance. Everyone is the creator of his own happiness here.

Market fundamentalists cling to the myths of the self-healing market and corporate beneficence..The real market economy functions very differently than the fantastic notions of the theoretical market economy. Maximum individual profit does not agree with social welfare.

In the past, social events and revolts shaped a generation. That changed in the 1990s. Identity is drawn from the consumption of brands. Therefore the public longing today is for better products and no longer for a better world.

The 2008 financial crisis is often wrongly described as a "state debt crisis" where cause and effect are inverted and economists and the market are released from responsibility. Sickness and catastrophe metaphors dominate discussion

Prosperity in large part is based on the ecological and social exploitation of poor countries in Africa and Asia. Today 20% of humanity consume 80% of global resources. The poor are played off against each other while the richest hide billions in tax havens.

The challenge of neoliberalism took an offensive form in the global North with the victories of Reagan and Thatcher. No coup and no dictatorship were needed to gain mass support for carrying out the political ideological hegemony
Stagnation, unemployment and futurelessness

Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party with 184 seats became the Majority Party in O Canada two weeks ago. "When government trusts citizens, citizens trust the government," Trudeau said. With higher taxes on the wealthy and infrastructure investment, Canada will become more inclusive.

The past subordination under the US policy oriented to regime change and chaos in the Middle East must be ended. A diplomatic offensive to end the war in Syria on the path of negotiation with Russia is necessary. Since March 1999, NATO was expanded with a dozen countries.

In the basic income society, work is what one wants, not what one must. Work is the contribution I make, not the obligation I meet to survive..."Alone I can become free but I cannot become free alone. The drama of becoming free is a social drama" (Swiss philosopher Stefan Brotbeck)

“Every city in our country has some serious similarities to New Orleans. Every city has some abandoned neighborhoods. Every city in our country has abandoned some public education, public housing, public healthcare, and criminal justice." (Bill Quigley quoted by Naomi Klein)

Crisis and chance are represented by the same Chinese letter. Big US and German cities have sold off public housing to gain revenue. The Federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit program has financed 2-3 million units. The state is obligated to protect from the brutal market.

In neoliberal theories, social justice is not a meaningful category and social inequality is a necessary result of market processes. Performance justice is a necessary illusion. Responsibility for poverty and misery is often shifted to individuals with the worst genes.

Middle class citizens with a little wealth who invested this on the stock exchange are responsible for certain jobs becoming more and more precarious... Many economists claim market forces regulate themselves and society doesn't need to intervene.

The August Honduras update is up, a lot has happened, young fire torch leader murdered, taxi driver leader murdered, 14 farmers imprisoned for over 39 days without bail, child of the resistance Oscar now a high school leader now singled out and arrested in a students protests and kept overnight, and so many other things. Meanwhile the hope seems to be in more people taking direct action, with the realisable dream of a general strike, rather than what is catching more attention against corruption right now

The model of homo oeconomicus is antiquated and over-simplified. Dominant economic models are not based on a realistic picture of humans... The model does not know different human human motives that could be differently activated depending on the context.

How did neoliberal policy gain a mass influence? To neoliberalism, we must soon oppose a great alternative narrative of freedom, democracy and solidarity before the social dislocations neutralize the positive resources amid a collapsing world climate.

The following statement is issued by various progressive individuals and organizations from many parts of the world, but mostly in Asia-Pacific. A copy of the statement has already been sent to Syriza's international department.

Another World is Possible! The United States Social Forum 2015 was held in San José at the end of June. A thousand activists from hundreds of organizations worked on strategies for necessary alternatives and system change.

On Monday, June 8, 2015, US District Court Judge James Brady ruled that the Angola 3's Albert Woodfox be both immediately released and barred from a retrial. Among those who communicated with Albert during that emotional week was Southern University Law Professor Angela A. Allen-Bell. In the days following Judge Brady's ruling, she was a featured guest on several television and radio shows that focused on Albert's case, including National Public Radio. In this interview with Angola 3 News, Prof. Bell discusses her new law journal article and reflects upon the latest developments in Albert's fight for freedom. She argues that recent Angola 3-related media coverage in the US is becoming "more substantive," and that this month "the media got bolder and began digging deeper than just a soundbite."

May 2015 in Honduras.... it came out that high officials of a social security department stole $320 millions using companies, this ending up in the campaign funds for National Party's electoral campaign in 2013 and diverted to those who made this happen using ghost companies... assassinations, threats, evictions, law being blatantly on the side of money, all evidentially continue. Check the titles here in the May post to see if you want to read some of it....

Average wages in the US are lower than 30 years ago. Profits and income inequality explode, not investments. The austerity policy that has always worsened unemployment and economic growth is promoted as without alternative by German chancellor Merkel.

The World Social Forum in Tunis (24-28 March 2015) closes with resounding unity against global warming, neoliberalism, militarism, terrorism, and for the increasingly important role of women in making another world possible.

What I saw behind the Global iron Curtain which, in my view, exists between the UN and the rest of humanity. I describe what I consider to be very much of enormous and profound importance hidden from people.

The crisis is multilayered-a bank crisis, a crisis of wealth distribution and a misallocation of capital between long-term real investments and virtual financial investments.. The frugal Schwabian housewife is not a suitable model.

French economist Thomas Piketty described neoliberalism or finance capitalism as an "inequality machine." Profits soar and investments are delayed. Keynes spoke of three phases: investments, surplus and stagnation. Reduced working hours is the only way to full employment.

American Professor describes the World's State Criminals as deciding human rights at the UN. In my view, a Global Iron Curtain exists with the UN hiding very much of enormous and profound importance from humanity.

"Our understanding of a modern economic and social system is strongly influenced by the phase between 1950 and 1975 when the social market economy was created and democracy was re-stabilized. Since then conditions have changed. New answers are necessary."

Unlike a chair, an idea can be shared by a whole people. Words can be like spears breaking frozen souls. (Kafka) Education is the great transformer (John Kenneth Galbraith). Economics as taught today is like brainwashing. (Ulrich Thielemann)
Incentives to investing in the real economy are vital after the phase of credit- and bubble prosperity.

Max Frisch summarized economism int he formula: "what brings profit is rational." Economism is a business ethics conception, a justification theory for profit maximization that declares ethics superfluous. Ultimately this is an "ethic" without morality.

Writing in 1948 off the coast of Scotland, George Orwell foresaw the time when war would become a domestic necessity to divert the people from economic contradictions. Newspeak is used so lies are called truth and slavery freedom.

The TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership agreement) involves the redistribution of power away from the parliaments and to the executive and its unelected lobbyists. The TTIP does not involve freedom of trade.

While the mainstream media speculates about the future of the Bolivarian Revolution since the passing of Hugo Chavez, for the Venezuelan popular sectors, there is no turning back to a state of marginalization and exclusion. Come learn about the process currently transpiring in Venezuela as the people, faithful to the legacy of Chavez, deepen and further radicalize their struggle in defense of the Bolivarian Revolution. Come learn, connect, and show your solidarity at this critical moment for the Venezuelan process.

The richest thousandth (0.1%) could increase their share in the total wealth very intensely since the 1980s. Their share is as much as the bottom 90%..While the millionaires increased their wealth enormously, the mass of the population is exposed to the continuing economic crisis.

Sylvain Timsit shows how society is influenced and what information is deemed relevant.
http://libyaagainstsuperpowermedia.org/2012/03/05/sylvain-timsit-ten-techniques-for-the-manipulation-of-public-opinion/

Theory development is also a war over dominance. The goals of Hayek's war were expulsion of the Keynesians, liberalization of the financial markets, abandonment of full employment policy, dismantling the social state and weakening unions.

"When capital profit is permanently higher than the growth rate for production and income which was the case up to the 19th century, capitalism automatically produces unacceptable and arbitrary inequalities that radically put in question the achievement principle..."

This introduction to Tomasz Konicz' "On the Search for Alternatives to the Permanent Capitalist Crisis" (2014) is translated from the German. Empire could be replaced by republic as excess could be replaced by access and more by enough Capitalist contradictions/dislocations are signs.

Without the social contract, we become wolves to one another. Basic economic, social and cultural human rights include the right to participate. Everyone should share in the wealth and prosperity brought by automation, labor-saving technology and higher productivity.

The US government faces a revenue crisis after giving billions to banks and big corporations. Billions are saved through automation, labor-saving technology and workers working at home. The neoliberal model promotes profits and speculation, not investments and job creation.

Filipino activist Karlo Mongaya reviews the avant-garde postconceptual writing of E San Juan Jr., and its critique of author-centered institutionalized expression in the neoliberal regime of Aquino in neocolonial Philippines.

The person exists as an end-in-him/herself and not merely as a means... On the other hand, the principle of the worldwide market economy is based on treating persons and their needs as means to the end of profit realization.

Our thinking on security, strength, health, happiness, work, and prosperity must change from the extractive and destructive paradigm to caring and protection. Nature is our partner and hope, more than an external, a free good or sink.

The poorest and weakest persons must pay the price for misguided political decisions. Political-economic decisions decide over the life and death of persons. The New Deal stands for an effective debt reduction. Germany has been an active driver of austerity.

The empirical-historical analysis of the top incomes and their wealth are in the center with Thomas Piketty's "Capital" (2014). The share of the top 10% was never below 60% from 1917 to 2012. A wealth tax is vital to reverse the exploding inequality.

The European Commission suspended the secret TTIP negotiations for four months to get citizen consultation on the Investor-State-Dispute SettlementThis proposed parallel system with 3-person courts of arbitration allows corporations to sue for lost profits. Decisions are irrevocable.

On August 9 in Ferguson, a small suburb of St. Louis, a cop killed Michael Brown firing 6 bullets into him: this young black man, unarmed, with his arms raised in the air, had made the mistake of not responding to his order to walk on the sidewalk. Michael Brown was left like a dog in the street for several hours without even his parents allowed to come close to his body.

Many knew the rise of housing prices had to end some time or other... Four theses explain why the Fed was not active during the real estate boom: power of lobbyists, market ideology, trust in abstract academic models and inflation targeting.

In Austria 30 percent of the gross domestic product is spent on social services (not including education spending)...Since the 1990s social security has been increasingly discussed as a financial burden and less as a social achievement

Future criticism of capitalism is not a taboo any more. Why is there so little resistance against capitalism. Capitalism is a secular religion... Thanks to ISIS, "we" can forget all the other problems. If an enemy disappears, the possibility of shifting our conflict to it also fades.

The economy exists for people, not vice versa. Economics should be pluralist, not a monolith. The economy should be embedded in society; society should not be embedded in the economy. Thomas Piketty and alternative economics emphasize inequality and mass unemployment.

Economic structures that form the basis for social prosperity have become dysfunctional. The financial markets have expanded their original function and are now self-financed markets in which protection from risks has become a highly speculative business.

Christchurch, NZ, post-quake victims are facing severe discrimination, a human rights issue. However, they are deprived of hearing the human rights truth and ethical plan. Need to be informed in mainstream media to reach democratic majority.

The wealth of others has become more a problem and less an incentive. Capital is blind, Thomas Piketty says. Capital grows faster than the economy. Differences in wealth are inherent in capitalism but do not represent a natural law. A society can accept them or act against them.

The following is a clarification re prev article. It says thinkers are being replaced by social controllers because truth is the major threat to the dominant elite, secular liberal collectivists.
Also, explains how Corporations are highly favored.

The TTIP, the largest free trade zone comprising 800 million of the EU and the US is being secretly negotiated. Democracy and the constitutional state are threatened by 3-person arbitration courts where corporations can sue states and decisions are irreversible.

We face the continuing dissolution of traditional types, forms and rules, not a new type, a new form or a new rule... What was once called estrangement or objectification should appear as workers' own interest. .. Karl Polanyi spoke of a dis-embedded economy.

The Civilian Conservation Corps helped overcome the basic pessimistic mood in society. Within a few months, 500,000 young persons had hope again. The government should intervene in case of an economic emergency.

An end of the Great Crisis is not insight at the beginning of the 21st century... The regime of finance-market driven accumulation has not brought forth any new formation of capitalism capable of development.

Responses of human rights members to post which considers religious political parties would have more influence if adopted a secular, ethical human rights base. Also, my response to sustainable development.

The "Plural Economics Network" challenges breaking through the monoculture and intellectual one-sidedness in economics...Instead of viewing our varied social problems from different perspectives, all the answers are derived from very similar models.

In his new book "Political Myths and Elite Misanthropy," professor Herbert Schui explains the myth of the achiever, the myth of state indebtedness, the myth of the market and competition and the myth of market conforming democracy.

Effects of the UN's neoliberal absolutism on 10 Dec 2008 has been hidden from the public by the UN and leadership of major human rights organizations but seen in GFC 2008/9 and now the rise of repressive regimes at UN.

Apple only gained its profits with the iPhone through state promotion and investments in the Internet and language recognition software. The state suffers a revenue crisis in part because Apple, Google and dominant corporations transfer profits to tax havens or dummy Irish corporations.

Neoliberalism has brought us back to Rockefeller's best times. Bill Gates is 1.4 million times as rich as the average American. A "feudal lifestyle" is made out to be worthwhile and in no way negatively described. Thus "re-feudalization" is dulled as a polemical term.

"The borders between skillful PR, dull propaganda and lobbyism and corruption are flowing. The only possibility for protecting oneself is to be informed as extensively and independently as possible. This is easier said than done; information costs energy and time and assumes a basic education."

Describes the 'Profound' Arrogance of bureaucratic elites at the UN in disregarding history, as it they 'know', to reinvent human rights to emphasize elites rather than individuals. Discussion with Islamic Assist Professor of Law on global ethical human rights.

The Filipino people’s democratic revolution constantly needs the revolutionary united front because this is the effective way to arouse, organize and mobilize the broad masses of the Filipino people in their millions in order to advance and win total victory. The need for the united front is more urgent than ever as the socio-economic and political crisis is rapidly worsening and inflicting intolerable suffering on the Filipino people and they must intensify their struggle against those who exploit and oppress them.

The belief that growth and prosperity for all people are promoted by free trade is as old as capitalism. This is often wonderfully represented in the model worlds of economists. But reality looks different. Specific particular interests are sold as the general interest.

The great economist John Kenneth Galbrath was shocked at the public squalor alongside private affluence. He devised the horse-sparrow theory, horses must be fed so the sparrows can live. A healthy economy means shrinking the financial sector and expanding the public sector.

Major Western Powers invited to New Zealand gives opportunity to adovate a global 'turn-around' by adopting the 'bottom-up' emphasis of global ethical human rights (developed in NZ) to replace 'near absolute', 'top-down' control of 'neoliberal absolutism'.

In the reality of international monopolist competition, narrow economic profit interests dominate to the disadvantage of broad prosperity gains. Protection of foreign mega-investors before indirect expropriation leads to a dispossession of nation state democracy.

Nature is our partner and the basis of future survival, not an external, free good or sink. Building a pipeline means abandoning a decent infrastructure. Are people really happy or have they become a little fatalistic?

Lobbyists and think tanks of transnational corporations dreamt of a global market without limits. With enticing slogans like more economic growth or creation of new jobs, the population should accept the trade-and investment agreement.

"The game is not over. The neoliberal dream has lost its status as an absolute and an ideal, without which its social projects will wither and perish. All it is capable of producing now are privileges, and cold, dead beings. A change will occur. Each of us can help it happen..."

In his 1940 short story "Inside the Whale," George Orwell satirizes the focus in Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer. Miller's characters are protected by the fat of the whale and never discuss the challenges and tasks of their historical time. In his poem Is this an apt characterization of our time?

"Personal performance" always depends on the work of past generations and state interventions. The 1% stylize inequality as a motor to innovation, growth and development. Exploding inequality is the end to public spirit and interdependence.

It is never too early or too late to challenge the dominant narrative. Capitalism is a fetish social formation, a demolishing of being not a reform of being. Capitalism may be the first case of an indebted cult, not an atoning cult, possibly the most bloodthirsty cult of humanity's history.

Both Germany and the US seem locked into unsustainable models. The Alternative Economic Policy study group has been publishing memorandums for 20 years urging a radical change of course: qualitative growth, expansion of public sector and reducing working hours.

Periodic social upheavals as a result of moral panic seem to be the norm for humanity, with large segments of society reacting, or overreacting, with almost virally propagated outrage to perceived threats. The moral panic of our current age, an obsession with sexual inviolability, illustrates our continued susceptibility to emotional and irrational fears.

The recently exposed recorded statements made by NJ Gov. Chris Christie's staff show a climate fueled by narcissism that enabled the retalitory actions against the Fort Lee Mayor in the form of several days of severe traffic jams. This unnatural traffic obstruction across the bridge resulted in the death of an elderly lady who was being transported by ambulance. As usual the narcissist does not care how their actions effect others and can scapegoat lower ranking staff as the culprits while escaping responsibility themselves.

Describes what I see as the UN’s gross neglect of duty re UN Charter (in my opinion, a ‘global crime against humanity’) to uphold UDHR. Also I consider greater political and national unity is planned to execute a ‘near absolute’ control in States.

The global financial crisis of 2009, which affected the West far more than other regions, was, in my view, a consequence of a UN decision on 10 December 2008. In my view, it was a deliberate decision at the UN that the West would go into permanent decline.

Millions of dollars are spent in propaganda to convince the public that social security is bankrupt, that the retirement age should be raised to 70 and that social security should be turned into private retirement accounts. Millions are spent to undermine unions & privatize education.

Old age poverty is the result of dismantling the social state...What is lacking for the impacted is justice. Need justice and distribution justice have always existed in the political realm. The task of the social state was to fight poverty and protect citizens.

The Occupy tactic was a remarkably successful tactic. If I’d been asked a month before Zuccotti Park whether to do this, I would have said, you’re crazy. But it worked extremely well. It just lighted a fire all over the place.

The capitalist system in its current form is no longer fit for today's world. The system that led us into crisis has long been ourdated. The brave new world of neoliberalism lies in ruin. Surveys show that a majuority of people regard capitalism as unjust and unsocial.

The state has a social nature and cannot only be a power and security state. Since the 1980s, the banks carried out a "quiet coup" (Simon Johnson) by spending over $4 billion on campaign contributions and lobbying over ten years.

Global ethical human rights will give youth a future. It's really a macabre understanding of human beings which sees only absolute control to crush potential as the way to achieve peace. In fact, in my view, it creates slaves and dangerous States which are not held to account.

More and more money capital concentrates in the hands of the rich which they let `work for itself.' Every day $1.5 trillion circulates around the globe and changes hands. Only two to three percent of that is needed to handle the business with goods and services. The rest is speculative excess.

While the U.S. media has been obsessed with the in-fighting between Democrats and Republicans, as well as the recent government shutdown and the global/domestic ramifications of a possible government default, little attention has been paid to a looming disaster confronting working people: Obama is again threatening to cut “entitlement” programs, meaning Social Security and Medicare.

Market fundamentalists cling to the myths of the self-healing market and corporate beneficence..The real market economy functions very differently than the fantastic notions of the theoretical market economy. Maximum individual profit does not agree with social welfare.

When the Egyptian army first began its offensive against the Muslim Brotherhood, many speculated that such an assault would likely be extended to the same revolutionaries who demanded — in massive demonstrations — that President Morsi be evicted from office.

"A Comprehensive Agrarian Reform also includes a massive distribution of land ... Land is not a commodity. Existing laws and regulations need to be reinforced, while new ones are needed to protect against speculation and land grabbing. "

Some independent human rights professionals made comments on the refusal of Helen Clark, Head of the United Nations Development Program, to discuss the global ethical human rights alternative to neoliberalism

When Helen Clark, Head of the United Nations Development Program, was asked during question time after delivering a lecture why the UN says nothing about the new plan for the world, global ethical human rights, she ignored the question.

Labor leader and civil rights activist Bayard Rustin has been posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. Along with Rustin, 15 others will be honored at a White House ceremony later this year.

Hope to question Helen Clark, head of the UNDP and considered one of the world's most powerful women, why the UN has failed to inform the global mainstream of new plan to rule the world, global ethical human rights, for over five years and despite the significant support it is receiving.

Politics has fought the symptoms of the great crisis with banking- and economic packages while its systemic causes remain untouched… The hardest phase of the great crisis is ahead of us, not behind us. All sectors try to safeguard their position through spending cuts...

"Students rate the teachers and demand a very specific kind of knowledge from them: it should be measurable, packaged and practical and cannot contain any uncertainties. Experimenting or thinking is not desired. There is a relation between service-provider and customer..."

The era of Arab Spring euphoria is long ended, having devolved into doubt, confusion or wholesale rejection. Libya and Syria put an abrupt end to the Arab Spring celebrations, with the current situation in Egypt adding to the frustration.

Instead of offering enlightenment about social reality, the media function as an amusement enterprise and immobilizing machine. Information mutates into infotainment... Advanced civilization is marginalized in many social areas into a sanctuary of the elites.

Do we want a great society based on ability and hardwork (often includes character) where people can reach their full potential or the prevailing mediocrity, with its descent-based 'bi-cultural' elite and, what I see as, 'arrested development' ?

The aesthetic of neoliberalism bids farewell to the bad in its environment. Originality and color disappear. Crap tends to make itself into an inquisition and banishes everything that cannot be adjusted in the trash of the system.

The policy that Merkel and Co. forced on the crisis countries has led to social catastrophes...The competition ideology has managed to establish the notion that generalized competition is the real human condition.

The self-regulating market and the invisible hand were neoliberal theories of Frederick August von Hayek and Milton Friedman. Submission to the market was described as a natural law, as natural and self-evident as the rotation of the planets. Solidarity and unions were decried as barriers.

Each fresh outrage by the Obama administration is met by a shrug of the shoulders or outright support by Democrats. With no clear ideas to fall back on, they meekly bleat “me, too” when the world’s industrialists and financiers pronounce their verdict on what is to be done.

The current economic crisis is a product of political mistakes, economic incompetence and criminal energy. Capitalism altogether has been a declaration of war. Politics bungled deregulation. The wisdom of the market never existed.

The question about alternatives to the dominant western model of life and greowth becomes increasingly urgent together with the looming-or already occurred-surpassing of Peak Oil. New measurements of prosperity include life satisfaction, access to health care and education

On April 24 "Rana Plaza" a 9-storey building in an industrial suburb of Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh (14 million), collapsed on about 3,500 workers (their number is not known precisely) working there. The building contained five textile factories, as well as a bank and many shops. The official present death toll is 1128, the number of injured is unknown. Most of the victims are women, who constitute 80 to 90% of the workforce in the Bangladeshi textile industry.

The thought-models of the economy have conquered all other social sciences. The person in these models is a homo oeconomicus, a rational agent whose only drive is maximizing his benefits. Only an action with the driving force of egoism is rational.

Between sequestration, with its damaging impact on workers and the entire economy, and the billions of dollars in cuts to Social Security, Medicare and other necessary social programs that President Obama is pushing, it is evident that the economic policies of both major parties are not intended to promote a recovery for working people. You cannot lift up a nation’s economy while slashing away at its consumers’ pocketbooks. In order to justify their defiance of this elementary law, both Republicans and Democrats start talking the language of “austerity,” that is the notion that economic policy must be guided by reducing budgetary deficits first and foremost, and that workers exclusively must be made to pay the cost.

The competition ideology has been hammered into our heads for thirty years. Claiming better outcomes are generally realized when everything is poisoned by the competitive is pure ideology. Competition that exceeds the limits of its useful fields orders murderous measures.

People still believe in the “faster, higher and bigger.” This fiction is maintained through over-chemicalization, over-technization, genetic manipulation or simply bribery of the judges. People lie to themselves.

Social cuts are a danger for democracy..When fear of social descent or collapse seizes the middle class, the danger grows that exclusion-ideologies may gain acceptance like racism, nationalism or social Darwinism..The economic future is given away on the altar of an ideology that raises location competition to the leitmotif of political-economic policy.

A perverse system arose out of the interaction of deregulation of the financial system and polarization of asset distribution. A reform of the financial system can only be part of the repair of the system. When wages grow again with productivity, an economic balance will be possible

Before Social Security and Medicare existed, the elderly were either completely dependent on their children or were left to beg in the streets. These programs thus remain sacred to the vast majority of Americans. They allow the elderly dignity and independence instead of poverty and insecurity.

The chasm between poor and rich opens even more. The uncoupling of growth and quality of life on one side and productivity and work volumes on the other side make clear that "business-as-usual" leads to growing problems. German GDP grew 300% with 20% fewer workers.

The late Venezuelan president Chavez deserves appreciation for his
social ''Bolivarian'' programs and his anti imperialist engagement.
However, reprehensible sides of his reign are the repression in Venezuela and the oppression of the freedom of expression.
His friendly relationships with dictators like Assad, Lushenko and Kaddafi are disgustable.
Therefore he doesn't deserve the unconditional praise he gets from his leftist admirors.

President Obama’s recent closed-door sessions with Republican congressmen to reach a “grand bargain” has roused suspiciously little attention in the mainstream media. What scant reporting has occurred presents the following narrative: President Obama is a “middle ground” politician attempting to breach political divides with erstwhile Republican opponents. In reality these meetings are not between political opposites, but kindred spirits; perfectly matched ideologies that differ only in implementation, and only by degrees.

Reduced working hours is the only logically and historically consistent answer to the annual productivity increases that are above the real growth rates of the economy and without reduced working hours lead to a decline of work volume and unemployment.

The good social state invests in the social, in the education of children of the new lower classes... Taxes is the price we pay for a civilized society (Oliver Wendell Holmes).. The state share must increase in a developed society since ever greater demands are made on the state.

If the US removed the cap on social security taxes, public spirit and generational fairness would return to the states. At present, there is a cap at $106K. If you make $4 million, you only pay social security tax on the first $106K.

U.S. politicians have cried wolf over austerity long enough for the public to ignore them. A perfect time, then, for politicians to actually unleash the wolves. Barring an unlikely last minute deal, here’s a short list of some of the massive, national bi-partisan-created austerity cuts, according to the New York Times.

This is a call for all individuals, collectives and people around the world who are working towards the construction of another society from below to come together for an international meeting. The aim is to establish the Bloc for the Integral Revolution.

The financial crisis of the states-dramatically intensified by the costs of bailing out the banks-shifts the costs to the broad population without touching the wealth of the economic elites. Political governing is increasingly uncoupled from the approval and influence of citizens.

A top NZ politician has given some support to our council's promotion of an ethical approach to human rights, development and globalization for World Peace. It would replace the present world's dominant ideology, neoliberalism.

Spurred by real urgency over the corporate driven ruin of the environment, a growing social movement is taking shape that will be on display this Sunday, February 17, when tens of thousands descend on the streets of Washington, D.C. in a show of power titled “Forward On Climate.”

In a political era of corporate dominance it was inevitable that doublespeak would become the official language of Washington, DC. Now “cuts” to social programs are referred to as “savings,” while the destruction of these programs is “reform.” This is the essence of President Obama’s doublespeakish “Race to the Top” public education “reform,” as well as his yet-to-be-announced deficit plan based on Medicare “savings.”

Originally positive terms were devalued in the last decades (social state became "welfare dictatorship")
Social dislocations are charged to the impacted themselves. The scandal of poverty mutates to the scandal of the poor themselves.

The capitalist production method makes a few persons absurdly rich while the others hardly have enough to survive. Capitalism also makes people unfree and unhappy because their access to their true needs is blocked.

Last December, at the National Education Association headquarters in Washington, D.C., leaders from a variety of progressive organizations such as Greenpeace, the NAACP and the Communication Workers of America met with the intention of beginning a national campaign to, in the words of Mother Jones reporter Andy Kroll, “remake American politics.”

The wealth and power gained by Europe during the ascendancy of capitalism was built on slavery. Capitalism continues to be based on massive inequalities, which requires strong social divisions in order to be maintained. Divide-and-conquer is an old technique.

Before 1980, wages, productivity, investments and production pushed one another and ensured general prosperity. After 1980 wages were dropped as a driving force of economic demand. Demand gaps were filled by consumer credits.

The inflation of public indebtedness was an essential element for the enhanced power of financial capital. That inflation was a result of a conscious under-financing of the state and is a lever to enforce an austerity policy. Financialization
intensified the pressure to precariousness.

Happy Martin Luther King Day! The state has a social nature and can't be only a power and security state. The social state seems to have capsized into the activating or punishing state. Thirty-years of neoliberal restructuring gave every privilege to capital.

In Germany as in the US, the rightwing insists poverty is not a question of money but of attitude and thus of one's own making. Falling wages are said to be a sign of structural improvements on the labor market!

The attacks on the public domain, particularly public education, social services, and the public sector unions that are linked to these services, are coming in rapid-fire succession, sometimes in an overwhelming barrage where the victims have little time to comprehend what is happening and respond effectively.

In Greece, the functioning society was undermined until it finally collapsed. The crisis has destroyed the social state. A person becomes a kind of predatory wild animal in dramatic situations as now seen in Greece. He only sees himself and his own survival.

Rebellion justified.The adoption of a human rights instrument by the UN General Assembly in Dec 2008 led to the Global Financial Crisis in 2009.Involving international h.rights law it strongly favored Devel Asia, incl China, over the West.

As chaos again envelopes Egypt, the revolution is evolving in new directions, along contradictory and confusing channels. It’s tempting to immediately support the “opposition” to the Muslim Brotherhood’s apparent “power grab,” but the situation in Egypt is more complex. The recent events in Egypt are not simply signs of a healthy revolution, they include immediate dangers.

The media hype about the so-called fiscal cliff is just another bipartisan excuse to increase the gap between the wealthy and ever increasing number of poor people in the U.S. Notice both parties are advocating large cuts to social safety net programs when people are already struggling with poverty, while U.S. military bases remain operational on foreign soil through the Earth and only Presidential candidate Ron Paul was willing to save money by closing ALL overseas bases.

Whether we are left with the Fiscal Cliff or a Grand Bargain, workers in the U.S. face massive cuts to programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, unemployment insurance, Food Stamp assistance and other needed social safety nets. This is an example of “austerity” which has largely been pursued in the U.S. until now, on a statewide and local level.

Moralizing is a form of argumentation found in many ideologies and academic systems of thought.. State interventions, we were taught, are bad because they run counter to the objective laws of the market.. The market is a social institution that we interpret in different ways..

We, the International League of Peoples´ Struggle (ILPS), express our warmest greetings of solidarity to GABRIELA as you hold your 11th National Congress and celebrate your 28th year of activism and service to the Filipino women and the Filipino people in the struggle for national freedom and democracy.

The net must be understood for what it is: a marvelous creative space that forces us to question traditional norms and values, organizational forms and superficially accepted conditions to find new ways into the future.

With pro-Obama election posters still visible in most union halls across the country, the President has already taken steps towards selling out not only labor unions (again) but all working people. But this isn’t the “ordinary” sellout that working people have come to expect from Democrats — this is an attack of historic proportions.

Remember the neoliberalism of Reaganomics was an ideology that is carried out from America in Germany-with all its consequences from deregulation of the banking sector and the labor market and the change from the market economy to market society up to rule of the financial sector.

Literally the day after the election a sudden “urgency” gripped the nation: the imminent danger of the so-called “fiscal cliff” — the national automatic tax increases and spending cuts due in January. The media screamed that the suddenly approaching fiscal cliff would trigger a recession, forcing Democrats and Republicans to consider a “grand bargain” budget deal to avoid disaster.

Technological developments, nay, social progress must lead to increased democratization and not to more curtailment of freedoms. The advent of the Internet and related technologies has opened a wide and free access to democratic space wherein ordinary citizens, including the oppressed workers and, in general, the laboring and propertyless masses, could participate in studying and gathering information and discussing social and political issues.

How can we rebuild our society so we manage with less growth and not collapse when growth does not occur? Consumption beyond a certain level is pathological, a compensation or substitute for missed life (cf. Erich Fromm).

The battle is between poor and rich, not young against old. In Germany, the political reforms of the past twelve years r4elieved the wealthy and employers. The top tax rate and corporation taxes were lowered. Then the low-wage sector was developed.

An unrestrained speculative capitalism emerged out of investment capitalism. New financing instruments are invented. Risks are trivialized or glossed over to soothe the population. Boundless indebtedness becomes the norm. The new age led to immediate profit eclipsing investment.

One of the causes for the obvious helplessness of the governments is that they function as simple receivers of orders of the financial industry. The financial industry has no interest in a policy that would make it liable for its inflicted disaster..

As the country commemorates the 40th anniversary of the declaration of Martial Law, the nation remembers the dark era of the dictatorship and honors the memory of those who fought to restore democracy. However, while the days of military rule are long gone, vestiges of its legacy have found its way to the present times. A case in point is the recently passed Cybercrime Prevention Law.

Europe is in crisis because it has been hijacked by neoliberalism and finance. Along the road to another Europe, visions of change, protest and alternatives have to be woven into a common framework. Finance should be prevented from destroying the economy.

Vancouver Canada has 23 community centers, some with swimming pools that can take your breath away. Learning from other cultures and countries is a sign of strength, not of weakness. Without a social contract we become wolves. Without public goods, the market economy fails.

Keynesianism was replaced by neoliberalism that guided the fallow investment capital into speculation.The development of social systems and the rise of real wages contributed to social peace and stabilizing the economic upswing by strengthening mass consumption.

The economic crisis, the massive indebtedness of the country and Obama's election have radicalized politics and voters. Ryan's budget proposal was recently described as a fairy tale that would in no way stop the economic decline. Others call his plan a joke.

As the U.S. sinks further and further into economic decline, with 23 million people unemployed or underemployed and one report after another detailing the everyday sense of dread the average working class family faces with a declining standard of living, cuts to education and vital services for those most in need, the tightly controlled spectacle called the Democratic National Convention featured First Lady Michelle Obama on Tuesday, September 4th. The convention appeared little different than parties built on the personality cult of the Great Leader upon whom all aspirations are placed. There was little to distinguish the Democratic National Convention from the gross rubber stamp party congresses of the old Stalinist parties, with functionaries clapping in approval, on cue, for popular consumption.

The social state is an instrument of social pacification. It was a reaction to the extreme social and political dislocations. While Europe sank into chaos and fascism, Roosevelt developed the social state in the US that was exported after the war to Western Europe.

The Republican Party Platform committee calls for a constitutional ban on abortion in the 2012 GOP Platform. The constitutional ban would make no exception for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest, according to the examiner.com.

"The barbaric core of capitalist socialization is on full display in the present system crisis. The propagandists of totalitarian economism come in the mask of democrats. Economic-profitability thinking is imposed on society. Our society has long been viewed as a business."

Regulated capitalism reached its peak in the class compromise of the 1960s when representatives of workers could put the screws on the steamroller CEOs a little. The enemy and dynamic are lost to capitalism. Capitalism flows into a society without utopia and alternative.

Just when the Obama campaign couldn’t appear any less inspiring, Paul Ryan was put forth as the Republican vice presidential candidate. Suddenly team Obama was supplied with enough political munitions to scare every last American over the possible Ryan destruction of Medicare, Medicaid, cuts to Social Security and the various other evils inherent in his proposed national budget. Consequently, many Liberals and Leftists across the spectrum are now focused on preaching the horrors of a Republican presidential victory and thus the necessity of re-electing Obama.

A new idea, an ethical approach to human rights, development and globalization to replace neoliberalism, gives people a choice.The ethical human rights approach is being supported on the social networking sites by the US government, the UN while the NZ government maybe sympathetic.

Uncovering the fracture and the dislocations of this system, proposing changes and actively interfering is the optimistic side. The collective repression of problems is carried out to a spectacular extent. The welfare state and democracy cannot be separated.

Lowering the public debt burden is not an end-in-itself. Debts could serve to stimulate the economy and improve the living conditions of the victims of the crisis. Debt reduction must occur mainly by increasing the tax revenues (higher tax rates and combating tax evasion), not only by cuts.

We are movements and organizations from Asia, waging struggles on various fronts and arenas to defend our rights, resist policies and projects that cause harm and destruction, and to fight for immediate priorities and demands, as well as profound transformation of our societies. Fight for Our Future! No Price on Nature!

"The Commons is a way of reproducing society that opposes the market logic, puts in question private property, profit and competition and points to a future form of society beyond capitalism.. The Commons is not the solution but the change of perspectives that makes possible new solutions."

The fire of youth will never be put out! The future must be anticipated and protected in the present, not extrapolated from the present (J.Moltmann).
Private corporations occupy the government. This is destructive of democracy.

Sweeping away government means that the “market” will determine all outcomes. The “market” would mean concentrated corporate power would decide all outcomes, especially economic outcomes. That is what libertarians, Ron Paul included, would deliver if they actually were handed power.

Qualitative growth, breaking out of the box of quantitative growth, is the key to solving mass unemployment, environmental destruction and trade imbalance. A job in education costs 1/10 what a job in a chemical dye plant costs. The media is part of a system that refuses change.

The embedding of the market and the economy in the civil society is the challenge of the 21st century. Tax shelters or havens must be closed. The wealthiest 400 Americans have more wealth than 150 million people. Time for Plan B, alternative economics and reduced working hours!

Democracy, risk and liability are turned upside down when trillions bailout the banks and workers, pensioners and unemployed must pay the bill. We live from those who say No to corruption, to the state reduced to a trough or errand boy for the banks (Bill Moyers).

Despite all attempts to crush human potential, the purging of 'tall poppies', social class/socio-economic (wealth) discrimination, suppression of 'bottom-up' development hope still remains with the ethical human rights, development and globalization to replace neo liberalism and massive rebuild following tragic earthquakes.

The minority of a minority have seriously damaged the public interest for personal enrichment. The community itself is culpable for not resisting its plundering.and choosing representatives that defend its interests.

After the killings at the soccer match on February 1 at Port Said (74 deaths, mainly among supporters of the Al-Ahly club of Cairo), the “ultras”, supporters of the teams from the capital whom, throughout the events of last year had fought many times the forces of repression, have accused the SCAF of premeditated killing

National economies are now subject to the pressures of this supra-national financial "market" and to the institutions helpful to this market like the IMF and the European Central Bank. "Bailout umbrellas" at the expense of the common taxpayer are opened up.

February 1, 2012
POMONA - The prophetic voice of Cornel West was heard by hundreds of people this evening at Cal Poly Pomona. Dr. West lectured on self-knowledge, what it means to be human, suffering, and the Occupy movement's role in confronting social, civic, and economic death of our society, as well as its moral bankruptcy. The CSUPD, however, sent a different message when its agents silenced an activist by prohibiting him from handing out flyers.

The core of all western-individualist ideas of justice is the principle of personal responsibility. Everyone is responsible for the consequences of his/her actions. This motivates as well as disciplines. "We punish the virtuous and reward the squanderers."

The demand for the commons goes far beyond de-privatization and aims at a social infrastructure of goods and services that everyone needs and to which everyone is entitled. The real economy that must be preserved hardly exists.

The market economy must be bound to the principles of a fully-developed civil society. More is involved than a belated redistribution. A citizen is basically a social being. To overcome feudalism, precedence must be given to human- and civil rights over the power based on property.

"Nature and people are `fictional commodities. When they submit completely to market mechanisms and when markets are not regulated, this leads to people dying who don't find buyers for their labor power..."

The cocktail of social cuts, deregulation and privatization struck societies like a blow. The economy hit the wall; social securities were taken away. The debt problems were used as "timely opportunities" to gain new ground for the free market.

Issue 8 of the Journal of Aesthetics & Protest is out.
Our forward, recently written but conceived in the afterglow of the 2009/2010 UC occupations looks into the broad strategy of occupying everything.

Raul Zelik and Elmar Altvater discuss the nature of utopia, economics, how growth and work become fetishes, how what is rational in micro-economics can become irrational in macro-economics, time prosperity and how Marx recognized the contradictions in capitalism.

In a new study, leftist economists from a dozen EU countries criticize the policy of the German government in the Euro crisis. Its analysis and the proposed solutions are wrong. The state deficits are not the cause of the crisis. The financial crisis caused the state deficits.

The Homo economicus is a kind of calculating machine on two legs that incessantly calculates personal benefits and profit. His conduct follows the model of rational expectations. Incursions of the state will make possible more social equality.

The capitalist market economy develops more and more into a crisis economy. Capitalism is not a totality. Everything we need has never been transacted over the market, for example the whole informal economy in developing countries and the unpaid work in families.

Efficiency and prosperity can only be realized on capitalist markets when the economic system is bound in a social order under the primacy of politics. Democratic legitimated politics and the provision of public goods is derived from the "anatomy of market failure."

Shrinking the financial sector and abandoning neoliberal myths are vital to prevent the next crisis. The authors, German Young Socialists in their 30s, decry the myths that incomes are just, self-interest leads to public interest and economics and politics are separate.

Designed on the principle of 'Free Currencies – Free Markets – Free People – Free Planet', on 13 November 2011, the long-awaited Crom Alternative Currency System has finally been opened – in many ways a unique combination of a social network and payment system.

Capitalism is at an end and the whole world is drawn into the mess. Preventing this is an ethical imperative and a political duty. The multiple crisis has dragged on for years. The political class allows this to happen. Political answers to the debacle can only be found with clarity on causes.

The extended family as a kind of "self-help group" replaces the social state in the backward-oriented utopia of liberal-conservatism. Nothing hurts families more than the "rebuilding" or dismantling of the social state and the marketing of interpersonal relations.

The cost of making social security solvent for 75 years amounts to 0.58% of the GDP. The cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars amount to three times as much. The cost of transferring wealth to the top 1% over the past thirty years is 6% of the GDP or 10 times as much as social security cost.

In Portland, Oregon, all the promise and pitfalls of the Occupy Movement are on public display. Portland is second only to New York when it comes to sustained Occupy power, but in a newly born social movement strength is not something to take for granted. The vast amounts of public support in Portland, earned through large demonstrations and strategic outreach, can be frittered away by the internal contradictions of the movement.

We the 99% are outraged that the 1%, represented by mostly their fellow 1% members, the US Congress, are considering, through their Super Committee, to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. You can stop it now by calling 1-866-251-4044 where you will be connected to your US Senators. For more information, see strengthensocialsecurity.org

Occupy Wall Street and its sister movements, including Occupy San Diego, have dramatically changed the terms of political and economic debate in the U.S. Before they arose, it looked like the only choices the American people would be given to understand the disaster that has befallen them in this nation's economic collapse was the mild pro-corporatism of the Democratic Party and the ardent, Ayn Randian pro-corporatism of the Republicans and the Tea Party. What's more, so far the Occupy protesters have shown an ability to learn from the Left's past mistakes, pattern their movement after the American Revolution (as the Tea Party did) and junk the hideously unworkable process of consensus decision-making.

The acquisition and accumulation of wealth are based on many natural and social conditions. Many societies and generations worked so today's possibilities of acquisition exist. The so-called performance justice is often only a veil for great injustices.

Making a game sound appealing whose frauds are obvious is increasingly hard for the governments. The neoliberal vision was always a society of the asocial. The categorical imperative of neoliberalism was always an open and cynical attack on the working class.

The state was extorted by the banks. Bailing out the banks was regarded as without alternative..Rating agencies should become public institutions and system-relevant banks dismantled. Growth- and stability funds should be established as the credit-givers of last resort.

The capitalism of hopelessness is a capitalism where the enemy is lost, where capitalism can no longer fulfill its promise of prosperity for the people as in the 1960s and where capitalism neutralizes all utopian energy and alternatives. Public jobs must be created in the emergency.

A sustainable future requires facing the realities of waste and speculation. The economy should be a part of life, not a steamroller crushing creativity and self-determination. The economy should serve humankind, not vice versa.

The financial crisis has become a state debt crisis. "The rise of democracy was not possible without the social and legal civilizing of capitalism. The deregulation euphoria of democratic governments made possible the incredible ascent of the financial oligarchy."

Social security is life and death for millions. Raising the cap from $106K would make social security solvent for 75 years. The president must raise revenue, strengthen the infrastructure and create jobs.

Congressmember Bob Filner, San Diego labor leader Lorena Gonzalez and three other speakers appeared as part of a panel convened by Activist San Diego for their regular meeting August 15. The ostensible purpose was to discuss the recent debate in Washington over raising the nation's debt ceiling, but it soon turned into a discussion of how the Right managed to take over the debate, frame it the way they wanted and get virtually everything they wanted -- including promises of large cuts in government spending that will only worsen the economy and risk not only a double-dip recession but an outright depression. Filner talked not only about President Obama's willingness to concede the domestic agenda to the Republicans but his and the Democrats' Congressional leaders utter unwillingness to end the unaffordable wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

Tax cuts for the super-rich and corporations promised economic growth and more jobs but produced exploding inequality and generalized insecurity. The US faces a revenue crisis and a war spending crisis. Tax cuts, wars and bailouts of banks and firms caused massive US deficit.

A world wide economic and financial order decays to a pure end-in-itself and no longer serves people. A system build on an ideology in which everything-even the person-becomes a product is legitimated by apologists who trivialize derailments of social life as "normal."

President Aquino?s communication advisers said the President?s second State of the Nation Address (SONA) will focus more on ?social transformation?. What would that mean in real sense, however, largely depend on how Filipinos would view their lives today and in the immediate future. And for the Filipino masses who have been used to hearing nice words from their leaders, this new buzzword assumes no meaning at all unless accompanied by major policy reforms.

When the social contract disappears, we become wolves to each other. The tradition of prophetic socialism emphasizes the reign of God as the imperative for peace, justice and preservation of nature. Utopia is not a different world but a better world (Christoph Blumhardt).

The crisis of neoliberal financial market capitalism broke out in its center and has one central systemic cause. This crisis was triggered by the independence of the financial sphere... A solidarity mixed economy, democracy and peace are alternatives.

Media theory starts from the idea that a changed media technology changes society and builds new communities. For the first time, the reader or recipient can also be a sender. The net opens up the horizon of democracy beyond constitutional and representative democracy.

The situation of the US public budget is really dramatic. This indebtedness is the result of excessive military spending and the neoliberal policy launched at the beginning of the 1980s. A progressive counter-movement in the form of a broad Obama coalition is emerging.

JUNE 12, marking the independence of the Philippines from the Spanish empire, would not have been realized without the martyrdom of countless Filipinos foremost of whom is Jose Rizal. Andres Bonifacio, the leader of the Katipunan rebellion, honored Rizal's memory by using his name as a shibboleth. But the neocolonial politicians today have only fulfilled Rizal's nightmare that the slaves of yesterday will be the tyrants of today. This essay pays homage to Rizal on the 150th anniversary of his birth.

Three days before the commemoration of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform law (CARL), advocates who campaigned for the extension and improvement of the law banded together to call on President Benigno Simeon Aquino III to finish the just distribution of all agricultural lands.

The school system should not only produce students with a narrowed economic view. Society consists of more than the sum of benefit-maximizing individuals.An economic system with fewer income differences, regulated financial markets and welfare state brings greater stability.

A "Beyond Growth" congress will be held in Berlin, May 20-22. 2011. The driving forces of growth, the limits of growth, the crisis of the work society, an economy beyond growth, justice and the globalized world, sharing and the good life will be discussed.

NZ has been taken over by an anti-human rights philosophy, 'discriminatory collectivism, which aims to destroy individual and collective potential yet human rights regards the individual as a person (and spiritually has a 'name').

The self-regulating market and stgylizing all problems as exogenous, not endogenous are fatal myths as proven by Enron, Tepco, Citigroup and all corporate tax cheats. Can the real economy survive when financial profits amount to 40% of all profits? Viva economic learning!

What is obvious is still not recognized. Countries like Greece, Ireland and probably Portugal cannot be revitalized without changing the terms of their debts. Austerity programs are exacted which are inhuman and counter-productive.

San Diego hosted no fewer than three rallies on Sunday, May 1 — one between the Centro Cultural de la Raza and World Beat Center in Balboa Park, followed by a march to the Federal Building downtown where the second rally was held, and a third at the San Diego Community Concourse that united the participants with another set of marchers, who had assembled earlier in the morning in Chicano Park, also for a walk downtown. The rally speakers focused on a wide variety of progressive issues — workers’ rights, education cutbacks, health care, immigrants’ rights, war and peace, Queer liberation — and attempted to draw connections between them and psych the participants for the long struggle ahead to preserve and extend those rights in the face of a relentless assault on them by the radical Right.

We live on credit, shift costs and risks into the future and make possible a prosperity with the help of a policy of cheap money that is paid for by others. An interest-free money system would be a counter model to the growth pressure inherent in the present system.

The first fight over the federal budget in 2011 is over, and the Republicans have won. For at least the past 30 years Republican ideas — that government is bad, that the private sector is always more efficient than the public sector, that wages and benefits need to be cut to make America's workers "competitive" with the rest of the world, and government spending needs to be cut even if it risks turning the current recession into a full-fledged depression — have ruled. Progressives need to understand the depth of the Republicans’ triumph in order to begin the task of reversing it.

The neoliberal restructuring and globalization of capitalism has led to states becoming the spoils of financial capital. The neoliberal program is enforced with the help of states. Governments only react to the conditions set by the economically powerful. This is the end of politics.

Tepco operated antiquated nuclear reactors and glossed over the hard of a meltdown. The Japanese government will probably nationalize the firm since it cannot pay a fraction of its liabilities. What lessons do we learn? Should the public sector be expanded? We are all Wisconsin

"Another world is possible," Susan George declared at Porto Alegre. 80,000 activists came to Dakar. The world has changed, not only through the financial crisis that showed the market often causes more problems than it solves. The WSF has become a source of hope for a just world.

The case is characterized by the relatively simple underlying facts and law. The Chief Judge of the US District Court in Washington DC Royce Lamberth may proceed to dismiss the complaint under pretense of judicial review. However, the practice of pretense litigation undermines any remaining credibility of the US justice system.

Without the social contract, we become wolves to one another. Without the social contract, the state becomes a trough for the super-rich. Basic income could enable everyone to participate in social, economic and political life. Without vision, the people perish.

Liberation theology insists the poor are our teachers and the church is not an end-in-itself. The church that serves itself is different than the church that serves the world. The church that wants to return to the 19th century with little interest in social issues is a caricature.

Video-interviewed by Angola 3 News this week while touring the SF Bay Area with his new book Dancing With Dynamite (AK Press), author Benjamin Dangl argues that “because South American social movements have been so successful in the past decade, I think it is important to learn and understand what’s been successful and to apply those strategies and tactics here, where we are facing very similar challenges.”

Today, women in the Philippines and all over the world gather in different places and spaces to show our collective strength and make our collective voice heard as we speak out our sufferings, challenges, triumphs and aspirations. Our voices are joined together as we resist the abuses and marginalization wrought upon us by economic policies that discriminate against giving women productive employment, just wages and benefits at the workplace, and opportunities for livelihood and income; by societies that allow, or even promote, violence to be committed against women with impunity; by governments and public institutions that turn a blind eye to the human rights of women.

The US no longer has the necessary financial means to maintain its worldwide military machine (which now drives the US deeper in indebtedness to the international financial markets). The failure of the Project for a New American Century shows the US has not succeeded in subjecting the world

The Partido ng Manggagawa (PM) and the anti-contractualization coalition KONTRA slammed the shortcomings of EDSA 1 in a symbolic mass action this afternoon. Scores of workers from PM and KONTRA assembled at the Ninoy Aquino monument at the corner of Timog and Quezon Avenues at around 5:30 pm.

One year ago, on March 4, California students and teachers had a one-day strike for education, but nothing has improved because we did not have a general strike. Today, Wisconsin workers are striking and protesting the planned Democrat-Republican attack on the workingclass so as to maximize the profits of the capitalist class. The whole country should join this 2d American Revolution with all deliberate speed.

No to market-based business deals proposed by the governments of industrialized countries and transnational corporations, the thousands of solutions to the climate crisis are in the hands of the people.

A powerful wave of anger among the poor and unemployed Arab masses shakes the young, voracious and brutal capitalism of the North African and Middle Eastern countries supported by the old and bloody capitalism in Europe and America. Anticipation of a social wave that can only be resolved in favor of the vast majority of the population by the emergence of the proletarian class.

On January 21, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William Highberger stripped teachers employed by the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) of certain seniority rights, allegedly to stanch the loss of young, quality teachers at inner-city schools. If the order is upheld on appeal, the LAUSD can lay off higher paid veteran teachers without regard to their years of service, in violation of collective bargaining provisions that have been in effect for decades. At the same time, there are more than a dozen billionaires living in Los Angeles, and dozens more who measure their wealth by the hundreds of millions.

For three decades, incomes and assets were increasingly unequally distributed in the US. While economic output increased 60% from 1990-2008, median income only rose 10%. All governments since Reagan's first term drove this development with their tax cuts, subsidies and neglect of educ.

In his latest budget, California Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, is proposing drastic cuts that will affect the lives of students and workers throughout the state, including $1.4 billion in cuts to higher education. The net wealth of the 19 richest Californians is more than ten times the entire amount of proposed budget cuts!

"The central point is that the financial sphere has the potential of developing into an autonomous subsystem of the whole economy with an enormous capacity of self-expansion..Like cancer, it has no internal control mechanism. It can only be brought under control by external interventions"

Tunisia woke up the Middle East with a thundering yawn. After years of domination by western-backed tyrants, the working people of the Arab world are rising from slumber. Once fully awake and aware of their surroundings, they'll shake off the influence of the western nations with a collective flick of the wrist.
The elites of the Middle East and their western benefactors are petrified. The revolution in Tunisia deposed of two Presidents in 48 hours, and the vast energy of the people has already spilled over its borders, immediately affecting the politics of Algeria, Jordan, and Egypt. The Guardian reports:

Twenty three anti-war, social justice activists - mainly from Minneapolis and Chicago, have received subpoenas demanding that they testify before a Grand Jury on January 25th about their political activities. Many are refusing to comply. Coordinated protests are set in many cities across the country on the day of the Grand Jury proceedings.

In the last decades, wealth has concentrated in a few hands. The increasing inequality does not offend us; this inequality is the result of an active policy. The rich prevail; they are subsidized and relieved from contributions to the social infrastructure while social benefits are cut.

The history of the crisis of the western world that we all experience more or less consciously or unconsciously (or partly ignore) is a history of boundless lobbylism, political corruption, market fetishism and unbroken faith in growth..Economic theories were and are children of their time.

The U.S. social and economic landscape is rapidly changing. Inequalities in wealth, which began an upward ascent back in the 1980s, accelerated in the 1990s. Now they are flying off the charts, thanks first to the tax cuts ushered in by Bush II and second to Obama’s recent continuation of those tax cuts, plus more, which have the effect of taking from the working class and poor in order to give to the rich.

“Feminist opinion—as the Assange case and the Polanski affair before it have demonstrated—has become one of the means of legitimizing the suppression of nonconformists and political dissidents, and of changing the subject from the great social issues, above all, class oppression and social inequality, to stale and self-pitying concerns.
Those supervising the attack against Assange are no doubt congratulating themselves on its clever design. Mounting it in the guise of a campaign against the sexual molestation of women… how else could such a filthy operation, with its threat of a sweeping assault on democratic rights, be mounted and even legitimized today?
The powers that be know the Pollitts of this world, and the Nation. The magazine’s editor, Katrina vanden Heuvel, is, after all, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a leading ruling class think tank whose membership has included numerous CIA directors, along with dozens of US generals and admirals.”

"One we had a coordinated social market economy. This `Rhine' capitalism embodied the insight gained in bitter experience that totally freed markets are self-destructive. This insight was lost somewhere between Friedman and Hayek, Thatcher and Reagan.."

As the recession grinds on, politicians in most industrial countries have an incentive to make exaggerated claims about the supposed coming economic recovery. Some say the recession is over. Obama is in the group that claims we're on "the road to recovery,” while other nations can only spot recovery "on the horizon.” Below are seven important social phenomena that point to a more realistic economic and political outlook.
1) Central Banks are Dumbfounded. The usual tricks that U.S. and European central banks use to avoid recessions are long-exhausted. Interest rates cannot get any lower. And because cheap money wasn't working, the printing press was turned up a notch, into what the U.S. federal reserve calls quantitative easing -- injecting hundreds of billions of dollars into the world economy, escalating an emerging trade war.

New Zealand has been given another chance to free itself from discriminatory collectivism while the US seems to be still battling with it. NZ was saved by the emerging truth of human rights omissions and one of life's miracles, the major Christchurch earthquake (no one killed).

From the U.S. to Europe media and politicians are singing the same tune: "budget deficits must be drastically reduced -- by cutting social programs -- so that global bond investors do not threaten the economy."
Not since the "war on terror" was announced has government policy been so shrouded in confusion and unanswered questions. In the same way we are not to ask how U.S. foreign policy has angered millions in the Middle East, we must remain equally silent about questioning the recent history behind the current "deficit crisis.”

"At Université Lyon-2, students gathered to vote on future action and protest the detention of demonstrators at Corbas prison, according to an account in Lyon-Capitale. They criticized the unions and also bourgeois “left” parties such as the Socialist Party (PS) and its presumed 2012 presidential candidate, Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
Strauss-Kahn is currently the head of the International Monetary Fund, where he pressed for massive austerity policies and wage cuts to be imposed on Greek workers in exchange for an IMF bailout, during this spring’s Greek debt crisis.
One Lyon student said: “We’re in the street because we have had enough of Sarkozy. We had had enough of [ex- President Jacques] Chirac before and we will have had enough of Strauss-Kahn.... What we do not want anymore is Sarkozy, capitalism, and globalization.”

The New Zealand government's response to the Christchurch earthquake was to assumed greater executive power to help the victims - necessary, in part, due to deficiencies in human rights law the same deficiencies which created a major tragedy at the bottom of the social scale over past 20 yrs.

On October 11 three million French workers were on strike against President Sarkozy's authoritarian attacks on social security and pensions. "Despite its obvious debacle, the neoliberal dogma is still regarded as the only correct economic system."

The servants of these investors and money "managers," like corporate executives and our elected - excuse the expression -representatives, look from the side, taking a payoff, as we get economically raped. This is designed to prevent wage "inflation" (that's a raise in the minimum, or any other, wage) by keeping unemployment high,

We write to on behalf of the Ke Huelga, a free radio project in Mexico City which started in 1999 during a student strike. After 11 years of existence, we face a difficult situation because of
interferences and government threats. This is why we have launched a campaign to inform and denounce about the actions against us. As a first
step, we produced the text "Mexico bleeds". We invite you to read it and diffuse it.

Homelessness in not the problem, it is the symptom of a warped societal structure. Land-grabbers took title of the land, and the people have to buy/rent from them. Land is not made available for dwelling untill 100s of dollars can be squized out of each square-foot.

Focusing on the prison abolitionist movement, we interview two co-editors of an exciting new series at Daily Kos, called Criminal InJustice Kos, a weekly series "devoted to exploring the myths of 'crime', 'criminals', and criminal justice and the intersection of race/ethnicity/class/gender/sexuality/age/disability in policing and punishment. Criminal Injustice Kos is committed to furthering action towards reducing inequity in the US criminal justice system." Look for Criminal InJustice Kos every Wednesday at 6 pm CST.

Philosopher and psychoanalyst Erich Fromm never abandoned his vision of a humanist non-estranged society where persons were not commodified or mere goods producers. His book "Having or Being" was written at age 76.

"The global debt crisis, which is beginning in Greece, and spreading throughout the euro-zone economies of Spain, Portugal, Ireland and ultimately the entire EU, will further consume the UK, Japan and go all the way to America.[50] This will be a truly global debt crisis. Government measures to address the issue of debt focus on the implementation of ‘fiscal austerity measures’ to reduce the debt burdens and make interest payments on their debts.
‘Fiscal austerity’ is a vague term that in actuality refers to cutting social spending and increasing taxes. The effect this has is that the public sector is devastated, as all assets are privatized, public workers are fired en masse, unemployment becomes rampant, health and education disappear, taxes rise dramatically, and currencies are devalued to make all assets cheaper for international corporations and banks to buy up, while internally causing inflation – dramatically increasing the costs of fuel and food. In short, ‘fiscal austerity’ implies ‘social destruction’ as the social foundations of nations and peoples are pulled out from under them. States then become despotic and oppress the people, who naturally revolt against ‘austerity’: the sterilization of society."

No one can own what exists in nature except nature. A human cannot own its own mother. However western ownership systems have been forced on us again and again that contradict our worldview and our values. Ubunto is another example: "I only live when you live."

In order to resist the policy of blood and tears which the bourgeoisie inflicts on it, the proletariat has no other possibility than the resumption of the class struggle, starting with the rejection of anti-worker measures by the government and the calls for “national solidarity”, and for sacrifices “to defend the fatherland and democracy”.

Reagan announced the state was "the problem" for the functioning of the economy. State action could not solve economic problems. The latest reality of economic crisis thoroughly destroyed the neoclassical theses. The crisis showed its ideological limitation and conditionality.

The term social goes through a fundamental change of meaning. Earlier social described an obligation of society to its members. Today the little word social stands for the caring duty of members of society toward the capitalist machine

How convenient for Goldman Sachs. Just as most working people were demanding that the Goldman bosses and other Wall Street criminals either be massively fined, jailed or worse, the nation’s attention is suddenly forced to react to the racist immigration law in Arizona. And although the two incidents are not directly related, they represent a trend that is likely to increase in the months and years ahead.

This crisis did not break out over society like a force of nature. Financial managers spread the legend that financial crises belong to capitalism as water belongs to the ocean and that euphoric phases of bubble formation and the bursting of bubbles come and go like the seasons.

"In the same month, the highest-ranking general in the United States, “Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ranks the financial crisis as a higher priority and greater risk to security than current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.” He explained, “It's a global crisis. And as that impacts security issues, or feeds greater instability, I think it will impact on our national security in ways that we quite haven't figured out yet.”[22] Rest assured, they’ve figured it out, but they don’t want to tell you."

"Spring has returned. The earth is like a child that knows poems." (Rainer Maria Rilke) Citizen money would guarantee a reasonable life for all. Citizen money challenges our social and cultural assumptions and uncouples work and income.

Bumrise (www-bumrise.com), the role-playing game where gamers play as a homeless beggar and roam the streets of New York looking for trash, collecting bottles and picking fights- is most successful in California. Especially in Los Angeles and San Francisco, the game has literally thousands of visitors and registered users.

The stock exchange produces nothing. Speculations and bets do not create any assets, even if the daily stock market reports on television try to get us to believe the opposite. That the financial markets make themselves independent is the result of political decisions.

"Protect Detroit and protect the nation. The following articles show what we’re up against. Also see reports on DemocracyNow.org (04/02/10)."
"While the Mayor’s urban renewal plan has high-level backing, many have condemned it as a form of land-grabbing. I’m joined now by a vocal critic of the proposed downsizing of Detroit. Sharon “Shea” Howell is an activist and a professor of communication and journalism at Oakland University. She writes a weekly column for the Michigan Citizen."

Citizens are protected from incursions of the state and on the other side must accept the sovereignty of the state and the general law as prerequisites of property and security. Whoever has visions should be the physician. A good physician will urge changing one's way of life.

Social justice, solidarity and sharing opens doors. We have to do some rethinking. The social state does not create the problems that efficient workers are lacking and jobs for many are lacking. Mass unemployment is a social declaration: "We don't need you."

*This article was originally published in El Libertario #58, March-April 2010. Although originally based on the actual experiences of Venezuela’s social struggles, it deals with situations and facts of interest to activists anywhere.

There is no God, says 85-year-old author and ex-Roman Catholic Horacio Hanson — and he can prove it. That’s the claim he makes in his self-published book There Is No Creator: Religion Is a Fraud: What Now? — a title he readily admits is a deliberate in-your-face challenge to believers — and repeated when he spoke about it to the San Diego Humanist Association at the San Diego Public Library downtown on March 13. After noting that the worst insult in the Arabic language is, “May God deprive you of your religion,” Hanson launched into an hour-long presentation that made it clear that depriving his listeners — and the rest of humanity — of religion is precisely his intention.

Neoliberalism, financial market-driven capitalism, intensifies the crises. However the root of evil lies in the developmental laws of capitalism. Neoliberalism is based on double standards and double speak where CEOs are job creators and workers are cost factors.

On March 4, students and workers throughout California and the US will demonstrate against the attack on public education and increases in tuition that are making a college education unaffordable for the majority of working class youth.

Neoliberalism is the political-economic experiment of individualizing social risks and claiming growth and employment will be higher. This claim is refuted convincingly by the global financial crisis destroying enormous assets and causing growth and employment to crash.

Elite democracy with its corruption of wealth distribution, language and community is not the last word. The future could be a human future of a social contract, not a war of wolves against each other. Access could replace excess.

"The first and foremost important achievement during the Chávez administration is the 1999 Constitution, which, although not written nor decreed by Chávez himself, was created through his vision of change for Venezuela. The 1999 Constitution was, in fact, drafted - written - by the people of Venezuela in one of the most participatory examples of nation building, and then was ratified through popular national referendum by 75% of Venezuelans. The 1999 Constitution is one of the most advanced in the world in the area of human rights. It guarantees the rights to housing, education, healthcare, food, indigenous lands, languages, women's rights, worker's rights, living wages and a whole host of other rights that few other countries recognize on a national level. My favorite right in the Venezuelan Constitution is the right to a dignified life. That pretty much sums up all the others. Laws to implement these rights began to surface in 2001, with land reform, oil industry redistribution, tax laws and the creation of more than a dozen social programs - called missions - dedicated to addressing the basic needs of Venezuela's poor majority. In 2003, the first missions were directed at education and healthcare. Within two years, illiteracy was eradicated in the country and Venezuela was certified by UNESCO as a nation free of illiteracy. This was done with the help of a successful Cuban literacy program called "Yo si puedo" (Yes I can). Further educational missions were created to provide free universal education from primary to doctoral levels throughout the country. Today, Venezuela's population is much more educated than before, and adults who previously had no high school education now are encouraged to not only go through a secondary school program, but also university and graduate school.??The healthcare program, called "Barrio Adentro", has not only provided preventive healthcare to all Venezuelans - many who never had access to a doctor before - but also has guaranteed universal, free access to medical attention at the most advanced levels. MRIs, heart surgery, lab work, cancer treatments, are all provided free of cost to anyone (including foreigners) in need. Some of the most modern clinics, diagnostic treatment centers and hospitals have been built in the past five years under this program, placing Venezuela at the forefront of medical technology.??Other programs providing subsidized food and consumer products (Mercal, Pdval), job training (Mission Vuelvan Caras), subsidies to poor, single mothers (Madres del Barrio), attention to indigents and drug addicts (Mission Negra Hipolita) have reduced extreme poverty by 50% and raised Venezuelans standard of living and quality of life. While nothing is perfect, these changes are extraordinary and have transformed Venezuela into a nation far different from what it looked like 10 years ago. In fact, the most important achievement that Hugo Chávez himself is directly responsible for is the level of participation in the political process. Today, millions of Venezuelans previously invisible and excluded are visible and included. Those who were always marginalized and ignored in Venezuela by prior governments today have a voice, are seen and heard, and are actively participating in the building of a new economic, political and social model in their country.??2 MW---On Monday, President Chavez threw a Venezuelan judge in jail on charges of abuse of power for freeing a high-profile banker. Do you think he overstepped his authority as executive or violated the principle of separation of powers? What does this say about Chavez's resolve to fight corruption?"

"The earth does not belong to people; people belong to the earth." (chief Seattle)> Nature is not a free good, external or sink but our living mother and basis for future human life. Alternative economics and community centers could lead us out of the dystopia of imperial wars.

When Republican Congressman Ron Paul recently introduced legislation to audit the Federal Reserve, diverse sections of the political spectrum applauded. And rightfully so. The Fed’s role in the still-developing bank bailouts is one of utter secrecy; the total cost of which — as estimated by the bailout’s Special Inspector General, Neil Barofsky — could cost taxpayers $23.7 trillion. The fact that legislation needed to be introduced to raise the question of the whereabouts of these funds points to a larger breakdown in U.S. democracy.

The reforms that Barack Obama is proposing will not change the US' abysmal healthcare system because those who profit from it have been able to buy protection from the lawmakers.. The Golden Age of the welfare state began after the Second World War.

A commentary on the Nov 23 slaughter of 57 civilians in Maguindanao, Philipppines, sketching the historical parameters of the event and the converging political and social forces involved, with a focus on the U.S. role in establishing the groundwork for the evils of the prevailing Arroyo state terrorism.

"This crisis brings into question the future of the Mexican Nation and it’s people. In this political scheme by the grand capitalists, domestic and foreign, we lack hope. The Mexican people do not have a place in this world of neoliberal globalization except as pariahs and a disposable labor force.
Given these circumstances, we need a patriotic transformation and a democratization of the political system, the economy and the culture that can confront this deep crisis of our country and the problems of the Mexican people. We need a transformation that will push out the bourgeois oligarchy and the political class that governs the state and the imperialist domain of Mexico. There is a need to construct a new majority that includes all of the patriotic forces that will install a new government and a new state. A new majority that is capable of taking back control and the property of the productive forces and strategic resources of the nation, and also able to guarantee sustainable development, social justice, national sovereignty, the autonomy of the indigenous pueblos and the practice of popular democracy."

In the last three decades, the financial markets have grown much faster than production.. The respective players (whether public or private) are not the problem but the rules of the game.. The goals and means of production must be redefined

A call to unite and confront the converging global crises of our times, replace the trade and investment pacts and related juggernauts of the corporate-driven global economy, and start building a sustainable economic future together.

A call to unite and confront the converging global crises of our times, replace the trade and investment pacts and related juggernauts of the corporate-driven global economy, and start building a sustainable economic future together.

The New Deal that led out of the worldwide economic crisis in the 1930s was based on the combination of a new technical-economic model with a new socio-economic model. Obama's achievement is not turning the necessity of overcoming the crisis against the social principle

Building community centers could be a way to learn from O Canada and break from the false religion of the market and profit. When the market and competition are made absolute, they become idols. CEOs are called job creators and workers "cost-factors."

A lot is happening in the tumultuous realm of global economics. The “Great Recession” has caused tectonic shifts internationally, with outcomes that will dramatically change the lives of millions of people in the U.S. and beyond. And while Obama is acknowledging this fact with repeated references to “a new world order,” he isn’t explaining how this adversely affects working-class Americans.

After more than a century of brutal colonization of the Philippines, U.S. troops continue to battle Moro insurgents and the New People's Army guerillas to protects its investments, support the bloody oligarchs headed by the Arroyo clique, and preserve its neocolonial stranglehold. The U.S. public should wake up to demand that Obama stop its support of the Arroyo regime and withdraw U.S. troops. E. San Juan's two books might help inform the US public of what's going on in the Philippines today.

In case you have not heard...Amy's wonderful mother Dorothy died on Monday...
Dorothy Bock Goodman
GOODMAN - Dorothy Bock, 79, of Setauket, NY. Beloved mother, grandmother, aunt, wife, friend, died October 5, 2009. She is survived by her children Steven, Amy, David and Daniel, five grandchildren, and predeceased by her husband George. She made the world a better place. Funeral Service Thursday, October 8, 1pm, at I.J. Morris Funeral Home, Dix Hills, NY.

"If the depression has not openly erupted, all the features of the 1930s are having a spectacular comeback." (Paul Krugman) To free the US from the claws of private interests, James Galbraith urges the public authority to set social and ecological norms.

* Different organizations and individuals from Venezuela with tradition in the social struggles linked to different anti-authoritarian and critical leftist approaches, with whom we have converged at the space called INSURGENTES, set position before the exhumations of the Caracazo.

Attac, a global justice network in many European countries, demands closing off-shore tax havens and debt cancellation for the third world. The word globalization has a function as a threat. Be flexible because capital is flexible and the state can do nothing!

Today at the UN New York States are signing a treaty which by its exclusion of core obligations and the right to development will create a people more dependent on the State and Corporations as well as discriminating against the poor. Obama ( & other States) is following such policies.

The freedom of the Internet is inviolable. The Internet's open architecture constitutes the basic IT law of a society which communicates digitally and, consequently, of journalism. The web constitutes an infrastructure for social exchange superior to that of 20th century mass media.

In a "post-democracy," the interests of global corporations prevail with the continuing facade of democratic institutions and procedures. Interest in politics in the population is very low. Criticism of neoliberalism brings together many movements and groups.

International human rights law to be signed by States on Sept 24, 2009, systematically discriminates against the poor. The establishment is pitted against the independent peoples and the most disadvantaged. A mediocre nation and a dependent people are the very likely outcomes.

The popular Resistance Front is threatening to boycott elections due to be held at the end of November, if their President is not reinstated. The situation becomes more and more tense as the election day draws near.

"The social market economy blows the wealth of this society in speculation rather than in higher wages, higher pensions or unemployment benefits.. All capital transactions with tax havens should be prohibited.. Instead of democratization, we growing centralization in a few hands.."

Keynes saw political control of markets and a distribution and social policy in favor of lower income groups as essential prerequisites of a stable long-term macro-economic development.. Three-hour workdays or a 15-hour week would be enough.

Capitalism is a social system, not a natural law. Capitalism has proven it cannot end wars, prevent crises or make possible a good life for all people. Instead of solidarity, the capitalist social system teaches us envy and egoism. Now those who privatized the state cry for state bailout packages.

The brutal repression of street demonstrations that have hit Tehran and the larger cities shows the determination of the Iranian government's Ahmadinejad not to tolerate any questioning of his political power. Accused of electoral fraud, the supporters of Ayatollah Khamenei and the outgoing president have responded with arrests, beatings and shootings; the police, the Pasdaran, and Basji volunteers headed by the Pasdaran are the instruments of the current repression.

Under the present rule of neoliberal privatization, the all-embracing principle is conquest of the world transformed into rights of private property.. After destruction of the privatization myth, we need real democratization.

A Great Country is inclusive - neo liberal social exclusion settles for mediocrity. Bottom-up rights are those excluded by the UN and States considered incompatible with neo liberalism. The discontented need to struggle for these rights which entail an ethical globalization.

"The basic trust in capital still exists. Modern capitalism has gained a firm place in our subconscious. The debacle of the global financial markets should have led to a rethinking long ago. But the culprits will probably get off lightly because the capitalist system is held as divinely ordained."

"Mobilizations and Strikes in Support of Zelaya
Members of social, indigenous and labor organizations from around the country have concentrated in the city's capital,organizing barricades around the presidential palace, demanding Zelaya's return to power. "Thousands of Hondurans gathered outside the presidential palace singing the national hymn," Telesur reported. "While the battalions mobilized against protesters at the Presidential House, the TV channels did not report on the tense events."Bertha Cáceres, the leader of the Consejo Cívico de Organizaciones Populares yIndígenas, said that the ethnic communities of the country are ready for resistance and do not recognize the Micheletti government."

"Now the market, the god of neoliberals, cannot help any more and speculators cry for the already instrumentalized state.. Studying pre-capitalist approaches is vital to develop a post-capitalist vision. The vision of the Bible is an economy of enough for all, an economy for life."

Republican Governor Schwarzenegger refuses to ask for loans until the gains of the workingclass are destroyed and Democratic President Barack Obama has refused to provide aid to California, although he did give over $700 billion to the banks with no accountability , the same banks which refuse to provide loans to anyone who has serious need where it be private businesses or governments. Bank excess reserves have skyrocketed from almost zero to over $800 billion since Fall 2008. Labor must respond with GENERAL STRIKE.

A CALL FOR A GLOBAL MOBILIZATION
AGAINST THE G20 SUMMIT IN PITTSBURGH, PA., U.S.
SEPTEMBER 24 AND 25, 2009
ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE – BUT WE MUST FIGHT FOR IT!
BAIL OUT THE PEOPLE
JOBS & SOCIAL NEEDS--NOT WAR AND GREED

In 2001 G8 met in Genova.
They were violent days of the suspension of civil rights that still weigh on the collective consciousness, along with the memory and sorrow for the death of Carlo Giuliani.
They were also days in which the "greatest men of the earth" developed the new creed of liberal globalization as it was a new universal religion.

July Delegation to Venezuela: Human Rights, Food Sovereignty & Social Change
The Alberto Lovera Bolivarian Circle of NY invites you to join us in July for a 10-day trip to Venezuela examining advances in food sovereignty and other initiatives for social change.

In the past, the village green and market swuare were surrounded by the church, town hall, school and hospital. Without these social institutions, there would be no market. This is also true for today's global financial markets.

We persuaded ourselves permanent economic growth was the answer to all questions. We should now engage in a growth debate about the nature of this growth, not whether we should renounce on economic growth. Increased GDP can mean destruction of foundations in long-term

"Guaranteeing the social infrastructure and social security for everyone should be central instead of guarantees for banks and corporations and socialization and democratization of the economy instead of nationalization!"

July Delegation to Venezuela: Human Rights, Food Sovereignty & Social Change
The Alberto Lovera Bolivarian Circle of NY invites you to join us in July for a 10-day trip to Venezuela examining advances in food sovereignty and other initiatives for social change.

July Delegation to Venezuela: Human Rights, Food Sovereignty & Social Change
The Alberto Lovera Bolivarian Circle of NY invites you to join us in July for a 10-day trip to Venezuela examining advances in food sovereignty and other initiatives for social change.

The Anarchists are Coming! There will be almost 40 workshops and discussions at the Santa Cruz Anarchist Convergence from May 7-11th. Here are times and descriptions of all of them! Also: flyers, dates, times, and descriptions of several events surrounding the convergence. Check it out!

The crisis offers an historical chance to civilize an unbridled capitalism with reform policy. The future relation of market and state is the focus of attention.. Financial markets are characterized by herd behavior. Risk consciousness disappears.

The unbridled free market was an illusion that gave free rein to greed and speculation and the dominance of the financial markets. Shareholder value made the profits of shareholders absolute and set short-term gain over long-term necessity.

The crisis calls for system alternatives and redistribution from top to bottom. Will the financial crisis encourage the transition to a new social order? A certain mix of good functioning markets and a strong welfare state leads to the best results.

Laziness at everyone's expense is the argument brought by opponents of basic income because they haven't understood the cause.. The work incentive will change. One will work to increase quality of life and for the meaning of work itself.

"Total mistrust prevails on the financial market. How can the state restore trust when trust in the state was decried for years? When all public affairs are changed into private affairs, citizens only see themselves as private citizens and the state becomes a business.."

* Soon El Libertario #56 will be available in the street and on the Internet (www.nodo50.org/ellibertario). El Libertario is the voice of free ideas and independent social movements in Venezuela and Latin America. As a preview of its usual combative, irreverent and uncompromising position with regard to authoritarian power and oppression, here's the editorial:

"Where is the child who uncovers the nakedness of the money economy?..The financial geniuses pretend to be the new gods of globalization. The builders of the Tower of Babel were modest compared to the new financial rulers of the world.

"The neoliberal revolution was the product of an historical development, a reaction to changed circumstances. In its course, many western states in the 1970s and 1980s reordered the relation of state and private power.."

Dominance of the profit logic and economization of all areas of life must be ended. Capitalism cannot solve global problems like poverty, insecurity, climate change, destruction of the environment, wars and dismantling democracy-it causes them!

The people will not be so easily convinced of liberalization, deregulation and privatization. On the contrary, people will have a clearer consciousness of the primacy of politics. The false incentive systems in the businesses must be removed.

The claim of non-wage benefits was stylized as social misuse, recipients of high incomes as achievers and unemployment as personal responsibility. According to this ideology, the optimal conditions for gaining profits lead to prosperity for all.

Saturday, February 21 2008
RIVERSIDE California -- A small crowd gathered at multiple sites in Downtown Riverside for a series of workshops, talks, and entertainment, all part of the Anarchist Fun Faire.

Hi fellows, here is the very first draft translation in English of the first pages of our last review in French "Communisme" N°60. Sorry for the language but improvements will come later. Meanwhile, have a good reading and we are waiting for your comments and critics...

* A translation of a March 2008 interview conducted by the French anarchist Charles Reeve with two members of the El Libertario group www.nodo50.org/ellibertario in Caracas, the nation’s capital, which offers some stark insights into the reality of the situation.

On February 16, in Salem, Oregon a rally of more than 5,000 students, teachers, parents, and social service workers assembled in front of the state capitol, demanding a solution to the state’s financial crisis.
This was but one of many similar protests nationwide; and Oregon is par for the course when it comes to U.S. states neck deep in a budget crisis. It is estimated that, unless other sources of revenue are raised immediately, the state will make $800 million in cuts…by June. The projected deficit for the next two years is $2.5 billion.

The global economic crisis heightens the potential for social unrest in Asia, where millions of people suddenly out of work will demand governments take swift and decisive action, analysts said.In the Philippines, of the country’s 36 million labor force, an estimated 40,000 to 200,000 workers are expected to lose their jobs this year, the National Economic and Development Authority said.

The neo liberal elite seized their opportunity to create global unemployment when an ideological shift by the global elites occurred over the past four years at the UN from right wing neo liberalism (Bush) to left wing neo liberalism (Obama).

A Punk band made an awesome song about the Murder of Sali and other women and activists. Just as music and an audio recording brought justice in the incident with Christian Bale, we look forward to using music, arts and activism to bring the glorious day when the Government (and the mainstream media) admit that their lack of investigation and attention to these increasing rapes and murders is found to be "inexcusable and out of order beyond belief."

"What is central is ending the constant expropriation of employees, not the expropriation of entrepreneurs."
Market fundamentalists stylize every tax as expropriation as though they had no responsibility for paying for roads, schools, health care, police, fire departments and water-food supervision.

How else should the economy and society become more sustainable without a partial turning away from the growth society of more and more? The de-acceleration of work and life is necessary. A basic income could initiate both.

The world today is undeniably chaotic — war, abject poverty, and unimaginable wealth exist side by side. In an attempt to explain the current social turmoil, some have resorted to religion and apocalypse, while others place the blame on the few bad apples that held positions of power as the economy slid into destitution. And then there are those who blame conspiracy, immigrants, or a society-wide lack of morality. All of the above explanations seem to be missing a crucial ingredient.
A simple observation should be central to any explanation of the current economic crisis: There are huge surpluses (or overproduction) of houses, cars, food stuffs, and many other products that millions of people desperately need, but cannot afford to buy.
This is the essence of the problem.

"The modern state as a constitutional state and participative democracy has a universal social security function and overall responsibility for the development of the economy according to basic rights."

Before he even takes office, the ruling class' selected president, Democrat Barack Obama, announced his plans to cut Social Security, Medicarre and Medicaid. He did not say anything about cutting US aid to Israel, which receives $15 million a day from US taxpayers to murder Palestinians and steal Palestinian land and gas fields because he is 100% pro-Israel.

*As Chavez attempts to allow indefinite presidential reelections for himself by way of the approval of the Referendum for Constitutional amendment, anarchists publish this declaration, which is also the Editorial of El Libertario #55, January-February 2009 (now on line, in Spanish www.nodo50.org/ellibertario).

Social capital has dangerously disappeared in the last years and decades. In the whole economy, there should be more cooperation and less competition, more sustainability and less monetary striving for gain. One cannot solve problems with the same thinking that caused the problems,

* Article originally published in spanish language in El Libertario, Venezuela, # 54, September-October 2008, that analyzes and goes over the problem of criminal violence through its social impact on contemporary Venezuela.

At this moment, they fear us, and they will keep on fearing us if we are thousands and everywhere. We are calling everyone to actions of solidarity, to fight for the rights of all of us.
Let 20 December be the beginning.

Without increasing internal demand, the upswing based on replacement investments and exports cannot continue. Without reduced working hours, adequate jobs will not be created in a world of reduced work volumes, rationalization and information technology.

The foremost ethical question is, given that we owe most of our productivity to a common social inheritance, to what extent can we say that we have "earned" our personal wealth? There is a growing consensus in favor of a new robust public compact to regulate our shared conditions.

The capitalist system does not make a mistake; it is the mistake. Capitalism is the problem. The solution would be an independent-socialist social order whose highest principles are mutual aid, respect for nature and a nonviolent rule-free humanly just world.

"Marx recognized the core of globalization as a globalization of capital..He also warned against the economization of all areas of life..A capitalism without ethical and legal frameworks is misanthropic..The social market economy is a civilization product.."

Even through its muffled language, it was obvious that the typically non-alarmist New York Times was having trouble digesting the latest government announcements. On November 26, the Treasury and Fed revealed it would spend 800 billion more tax dollars towards new “lending” programs. That day, the Times concluded that the government was “sending a message that they will print as much money as needed to revive the crippled banking system.”[!]
Later in the article we learn that “the government has assumed at least $7 trillion [!!] in direct and indirect financial obligations in the form of Wall Street bailouts, emergency lending and government guarantees on bank deposits, inter-bank loans and home mortgages.” The term “blank check” doesn’t begin to describe the vast amounts being tossed about.

Describing the dominant system as a social market economy is a deception. Social justice should be the integrating element of our economic order. Justice is not something additional to faith in God. Trust in the invisible hand is the core of the religion of the market.

Klaus Offe, a left thinker, once proposed Offe's paradox, the idea that"while capitalism cannot coexist with, neither can it exist without the welfare state." Canada has done better than some countries in protecting social welfare. The welfare state is not dead; what is dead is econ security.

Financial jugglers speculating with food, oil and other raw materials caused double-digit inflation and made staple foods like rice and wheat into luxury items for millions. Neoliberalism with one blow managed to drive nation states to the defensive.

With Obama elected President but not yet inaugurated, the question on everyone’s mind is, “what’s going to happen next?” Millions of people around the world are hoping that a Obama presidency will radically change the course of US politics, and with it, world politics. This is especially true for the huge numbers of mostly young volunteers working for Obama’s campaign, most of whom had never been involved in politics before.
And while it is impossible to predict the future precisely, one can make an educated guess as to Obama’s future actions, based on answering two fundamental questions: which social class is Obama and the Democratic Party going to represent while in office, and what are the current interests of that class. For example, if Obama were to act in the interests of the working class, a number of measures would be immediately taken, such as increasing wages, improving healthcare, funding schools, ending war, etc. If, on the other hand, Obama is going to represent the ruling class, we can expect policies similar to the Bush Presidency, who long ago proved himself to be a puppet for the banks and corporations.

The financial crisis is also an opportunity to reflect on our priorities and perspectives. Elite consciousness is a frozen consciousness where there are not alternatives and bankruptcy are only normal business practices.

The collapse of the delusional neoliberal idea frees our view for the necessity of a completely different society and a planetary social contract. Bankers are jungle highwaymen. Investments only pay where human rights are realized. The price of rice soared 83% within only six months.

Self-righteousness is really the grand illusion. The global North consumes the resources of the global South. We are literally devouring the future. Given resource scarcity and climate change, the world economy as a whole is a bubble economy, a monstrous bet on an impossible future.

* This Editorial from El Libertario (#54, September-October 2008, Venezuela) examines – from the current Venezuelan perspective – how authoritarian power builds its own security upon the destruction of collective security.

Mystery writer Ona Russell's latest book, "The Natural Selection," takes her female detective Sarah Kaufman to Dayton, Tennessee in 1925 for a murder mystery set against the backdrop of the Scopes trial, the attempt by the radical Right of the day to ban the teaching of evolution in schools. The book deals not only with the progressive implications of the theory of evolution but also its racist and classist outgrowths, social Darwinism and the eugenics movement, and the way the Ku Klux Klan made common cause with evolution advocates to advance their racist agenda.

MANILA, Philippines – A day before several lawmakers deliver their respective sponsorship speeches on the controversial bill promoting the use of both artificial and natural means of family planning, among others, a network of more than 50 non-government and people's organizations advocating women's and people's rights today urged other members of the House of Representatives to affirm women’s right to reproductive self-determination, and to support the immediate passage of the Reproductive Health Bill.

With the striking climate change, the "western lifestyle" has come into crisis. Our consumption is more environmentally-friendly but we simultaneously consume more and more so the environment is hardly relieved. Necessary social framing conditions are faded out.

Franz Segbers insists the Biblical Sabbath economy cares for the oikos, not speculation and accumulation
When the right of speculation trumps the right of housing, we end up protecting the sharks from the sardines (cf "Housing as a Human Right")

At the World Economic Forum, the extensive global crisis is trivialized to four "great risks." The neoliberal elite does not want a system change. It wants to assure itself against the threatening fourfold injustice. A 20% loss in the global social product could be avoided.

The trickle-down economy does not function. The left understands the market and rhe role the market can and should play in the economy. The right doesn't understand either. The Bush administration is nothing but the old corporatism in a new garment.

The homo oeconomicus supposedly acts completely rationally and makes his decisions in a social vacuum. Mark Buchanan introduces the discipline of social physics. He criticizes Gary Becker for replacing persons with pseudo-subjects w/o bodies, history and society.

Mass unemployment, low wages, precarious jobs and falling real income strain the social budgets, not demographic development. Something is not right when poverty grows while the super-wealthy receive more benefits and subsidies.

Politics is responsible for a social market economy and its rules and structures. When the state is reduced to only setting the framework for competition and then appeals to the responsibility of individual entrepreneurs, one falls at once in a neoliberal trap.

At the end of June, I participated in the "Los Angeles Social Forum," an attempt to hold a unifying gathering of people from many different movements and organizations in Los Angeles (and other parts of southern California) on the model of the World Social Forum and the first US Social Forum held last year in Atlanta.

Only 27% of Germans think the population benefits when business does well. Only 40% believe the economy and the population sit in the same boat. With tendencies to screen itself socially and give priority to its own goals, the economy loses the important capital of trust.

Poverty can only be overcome globally. A change in perspective is necessary where social assistance is seen as positive and not negative. Without a committment to human dignity and a human future, barbarism seems inevitable.

In "Kaspar Hauser," Jacob Wassermann describes a town suffering under a long drought. With the wells dry, the town becomes enmeshed in violence and recrimination until a little boy plays so beautifully on his flute that water rises again in the wells.

The punitive side of welfare state reform is read as a success. Problems result because firstly there is not enough work and secondfly thoser integrated in work can often hardly live from that. Massive exclusion and precariousness exist everywhere.

If life does not consist in the abundance of things and if time is borrowed from the future, do possessions invalidate community? Is life colonized by instrumental rationality (Habermas) when all life and relations are determined by money?

When everyone talks about stocks and consumption, what happens to social responsibility and public welfare? We suffer under a schizophrenia. The consumer in us opposes the worker. Businesses cannot be socially-responsible because they serve only one goal-maximization of profit.

* This editorial comes from issue #53 (May-June 2008) of El Libertario, a Venezuelan anarchist voice of ideas and proposals for action. It confirms our commitment to autonomous social mobilization, which has already begun to express itself through concrete struggles from below, as in the recent steelworkers conflict.

* This is a brief outline of the libertarian footprint in the history of Venezuela, prepared by members of the Collective Editorship of El Libertario www.nodo50.org/ellibertario. We hope that this serves as a useful point of reference for those who are interested in the subject.

As soon as we begun organizing our workplace into a union— a drug and alcohol rehab center— the murky non-profit world proved to be an obstacle. When first approached, many of our coworkers asked the same question, “would a union even work at a non-profit”? And to this we normally answered, “why not?” – Although a better answer might have been, “Why do non-profit workers believe they should have less rights or pay than other workers?” And with this question you’ve opened a Pandora’s Box that leads down a series of questions and answers that reveal a lot about how modern society functions, especially the relationship between workers’ standard of living, non-profits, and the present state of the capitalist system itself.
To help explain the gargantuan role that non-profits play in modern society, a book of essays about the subject -- cleverly named The Revolution Will Not be Funded-- was released by INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence. In its introduction chapter, the book explains how non-profits have evolved into organizations that divert political movements into dead ends, shape public opinion, and most relevant to this article, perform services previously done by the state.

"The workers who have to sell themselves bit by bit are a commodity like every other commercial article." This quotation from the 1848 Communist Manifesto is an accurate description of the current system which is morally sick and lacks consensus.

* The Collective Editorship of El Libertario, www.nodo50.org/ellibertario, expounds its vision of which path to follow in the current situation in Venezuela, summed up in the slogan, “Against the (B)oligarchy, demagoguery and corruption: Autonomous struggle of the underdogs!

Senator Edwards was right all along in his depictions of the two America. And thanks to the Bush Admnistration the gap between the "Have" and the " Have not" has reach an obscene level. To see photo of homeless and of NOLA post Katrina go to my web site.

"After the fall of the Berlin Wall, capitalism let its mask fall. Capitalism did not have to be social any more since socialism did not exist any longer as a counter-movement..Most economic leaders act irresponsibly today toward Europe's people and the future."

"Therer is no such thing as society," said Margaret Thatcher. "The neoliberal understanding of democracy is marked by skepticism and open hostility." (Ptak) That market pressures are often more severe and oppressive is repressedf as long as possible.

"The crisis of the welfare state is a crisis in the heads of the economic and political elites. The welfare state is a political barrier against the marketing of human labor. The welfare state can be regained through democratic solidarity.. Today one farmer feeds 88 non-farmers."

* The collective editors of the Venezuelan journal El Libertario and the Organizacion Nelson Garrido, have issued a call out for filmmakers and video activists from all over the world to present their recent autonomous works concerning active social movements in struggle. This will be held in Caracas, Venezuela, between the 21st and the 28th of January 2008.

In Bolivia, poverty and inequality are on the increase because the government has not been able to implement its National Development Plan. A report drawn up by the Planning Ministry in Bolivia and an arm of the United Nations, the UNFPA, came to the following conclusion: "There is social and economic inequality in the country due to a lack of government policies to bridge the gaps and these inequalities will increase as time passes."
The figures say it all. Poverty affects 6 out of 10 Bolivians, while 4 out of 10 live in extreme poverty. The situation is getting worse each year because the annual growth rate of the population is 200,000, but 174,000 of these will live in poverty. While the bourgeoisie plays with hunger strikes to gain so-called Autonomy, some 15,000 children die each year from hunger or hunger related diseases.
On the same day that the UN report appeared, it was announced that annual economic growth had fallen from 4.5% in 2006 to 3.8% in 2007. At the same time inflation has risen to 12% mainly due to the rising cost of foodstuffs. Here are two examples. In 6 months a kilo of rice in Santa Cruz had doubled in price from 4 Bolivianos to 8. Gas bottles used for cooking had risen from 25Bs to 50Bs, but it was still hard to find any because most are being exported to Peru where they will sell for up to 125Bs. So business does not worry if Bolivians have no gas to cook with as long as they make a profit.

Arguably, this work is as controversial as it is timely. Such an intelligence estimate, if you will, would not have been written had it not related to many important and critical political issues and crises of our day (particularly as related to dominant “cultural clashes” as so framed by various think-tanks). But this work also significantly relates to political theory, history, criminal justice, jurisprudence, as well as social and political psychology etc. It has something of interest to many inquiring minds. Ideas here will not likely be easily dismissed—irrespective of one’s stance.

Arguably, this work is as controversial as it is timely. Such an intelligence estimate, if you will, would not have been written had it not related to many important and critical political issues and crises of our day (particularly as related to dominant “cultural clashes” as so framed by various think-tanks). But this work also significantly relates to political theory, history, criminal justice, jurisprudence, as well as social and political psychology etc. It has something of interest to many inquiring minds.

Sometimes small statistics can have huge implications. The U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics recently reported that the age at which U.S. workers retire has risen for the first time in 100 years. According to the report, in the mid-1980s, 18 percent of people in their late 60s still had jobs; today, it is 29 percent. Millions of U.S. workers can no longer look forward to the “Golden Years” of guaranteed Social Security, Medicare health insurance and employer pensions. One in four baby boomers surveyed said they would likely never be able to retire – in other words, they will “work until they drop”. For those that do want to retire, the age at which they can do so is also being systematically raised. Workers born in 1960 or later must wait until age 67, rather than 65, to get their full Social Security benefits. There is talk of raising it further to 70.
The mainstream media took scant notice of this, and for good reason; it’s a huge indicator of deeper processes that are destroying the standard of living of workers in the United States and internationally. A quick look into why workers are delaying retirement – if they have the “luxury” of retiring at all – points a condemning finger at the current state of international capitalism, while at the same time warning younger workers of the even worse conditions they’ll certainly face under the auspices of the capitalist system.

The Economic social model is an alternative to the American mini-welfare state. The irrationality of finance capitalism appears in that the stock price rises while the value of labor falls. Labor is shamelessly robbed of its rights and dignity.

* The collective editors of the Venezuelan journal El Libertario and the Organizacion Nelson Garrido, have issued a call out for filmmakers and video activists from all over the world to present their recent autonomous works concerning active social movements in struggle. This will be held in Caracas, Venezuela, between the 21st and the 28th of January 2008.

Neoliberal hegemony or market radicalism is a danger for democracy because economic mechanisms replace politics. Neoliberals change the understanding of justice in society. The less generous the social benefits, the more powerful must be its security machine.

Refusing to work out historical sins like colonialism, fascism and apartheid repeats the historical model of conquest, domination and exclusion. Kairos Europe is directed against a system and its structures. Its positive goal sets life and people in first place.

Castillo, in his cool Asunción office, with the standard Paraguayan herbal tea, tereré in his hand, said these operations marked a shift in US military strategy. "The kind of training that used to just happen at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia is now decentralized," he explained. "The US military is now establishing new mechanisms of cooperation and training with armed forces." Combined efforts, such as MEDRETEs, are part of this agenda.

Ceasar, Nero, and Hitler all said they were elected, too. Without Representative Government (a Properly-functioning Grand Jury), who knows whether they were or not (as now), it's impossible....without a bill, at least, everytime wrongdoing's officially-alleged. Have your parties and save more lives than any MD could, now.

A political crisis of explosive proportion is looming this week in El Salvador. In an apparent
Effort to decapitate the leadership of one wing of the social movement, Salvadoran national police detained and imprisoned leaders of the Association of Rural Communities for the Development of El Salvador (CRIPDES), a social organization which has worked since the 1980’s with over three hundred organized communities to advocate for their rights. Along with 10 community members, the leaders were placed in “preventative detention” for up to three months pending trial by special tribunal on charges of terrorism.

Privatization undermines the nature of the state, the state's reason to exist, and leads to the loss of identity and sovereignty. The state revenue side is weakened by privatizing profitable state expenses. Siegfried Bross is a judge on the German Constitutional Court.

Turning away from the state causes old age poverty and endangers life and limb.. The consequences of privatization are faded out in the US and Germany.. Defining freedom as only entrepreneurial freedom and freedom of capital can be easily veiled.

Edith Isabel Rodriguez died on May 9th while two people called the emergency services phone number, 911, frantically trying to get her medical help. She died just outside the emergency room in Los Angeles’ King-Harbor hospital after spending hours seeking treatment for a steadily worsening condition. The entire tragedy reveals the strained and unhealthy state of social relations in America today.
The case received much media attention in recent weeks after the release of tape recordings of the 911 calls and a hospital video showing Rodriguez in the hours before her death—including segments showing a janitor mopping up around Rodriguez as she writhed in pain on the floor of the emergency room.

During the recent weeks and months a spirited debate developed in different German left wing newspapers and groups about the sense or non-sense, the perspectives and the means and goals of the mobilisation against the G8 summit. Different German and Austrian anti-fascist groups started a campaign to criticise a wrong analysis of capitalism widely spread in the anti-globalisation movement. In the context of this campaign several public discussions and lectures were held, a special webpage was set up but above all reader was published that contains a set of basic texts referring to this problem. This reader is available in German and English and will soon also be published in French in order to spread the debate also across other countries. Check it out: www.no-liberation-reader.tk

The neoclassical theory dominant today is different from the Keynesian theory that defined the decades after the 2nd World War. "Bad ideas flourish because theya re in the interest of powerful groups." (Paul Krugman)

Since the 1970s, the social consequences of the current period of capitalism (commonly referred to as globalization) have primarily affected the working class, especially those in manufacturing jobs. Despite the consequential deterioration of large cities and countless smaller towns — not to mention the pauperization of large segments of the population — the effects were dismissed by politicians and the mainstream media as necessary evils. The victims of this process were told to pick themselves up by their boot-straps, go back to school, and learn to integrate into the new, technology-driven global economy.
How things have changed!
Experience has exposed all the promises of globalization to be lies, and now those who think of themselves as "middle-class" are finding themselves on the chopping block. These skilled workers — engineers, Information Technology workers, accountants, legal and medical personnel, etc. — are confronted by the combined forces of a shrinking labor market, outsourcing, and the corporate-led importation of foreign workers through the H-1B visa program.

The unconditional basic income is a revolutionary idea but can only be realized in an evolutionary way.. We have long been in a foreign-provision economy. No one can provide for himself.. The state should offer people a basic income so they can live a modest humane life.

The Sixth Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) slated to start on May 14 in New York will focus on indigenous peoples’ rights to lands, territories and natural resources.
The UNPFII sessions will also include presentations on other key issues such as urban indigenous peoples and migration, data collection and disaggregation.
Three Cordillerans will be among the over 1,000 representatives of indigenous organizations and communities around the world and advocate groups who are expected to participate in the two-week long UNPFII sessions.
Joan Carling, from the Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA)’s Advisory Council will present issues on political killings and worsening militarization of indigenous communities in the Philippines. She will also give a presentation on the continuing violation of the ancestral land rights of indigenous peoples and the manipulation of the Free Informed and Prior Consent (FPIC) process by mining and agribusiness companies, among others with the connivance of some government officials.

On this May 14 election week, the brutal Arroyo regime in the Philippines backed by the Bush administration is facing the people's judgment for "crimes against humanity." This essay reflects on themes and issues surrounding the crisis of the neocolonial polity in the context of Bush's war of terror and barbaric, predatory globalized capital's assault on the peoples of the world.

Filipinos in the U.S. today comprise the largest community of Asians in the U.S. But knowledge about Filipinos is scarce; instead, trivialities, cliches, and stereotypes are disseminated by Filipino historical associations. This review calls attention to one serious effort to approach Filipinos from a historical-materialist point of view.

What is good for the economy and what is good for people diverge more and more! Nevertheless the opposite is drummed into people..Capitalism only knows the irrational end-in-itself, making more money out of money until the end of time. Capitalism strikes its own limits.

The Social Security Administration was established in 1937 under the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, it was an important part of Roosevelt’s New Deal to America; now 70 years since the system was introduced, Stewart Alexander, Candidate for President, wants to give more to an aging America.

On the tails of the hurtful words of Don Imus, the Our Name is Our Own Campaign™ will target the systemic level of this habitual branding, and how it sabotages the work of social justice and obscures the vision for our common dreams. This grassroots campaign will be unveiled by Ruby Sales -- acclaimed civil rights activist, social critic, public theologian and history maker -- at the Lucy Florence Cultural Center located in Los Angeles, at 11am this morning. See below for press release.

Leaders and members of Baptist, United Church of Christ, United Methodist Church, ANSWER Seattle, Veterans for Peace and the Alliance for a Just and Lasting Peace in the Philippines (AJLPP) will fund-raise on Mar 16, Friday at 6 PM at the University Baptist Church in Seattle, Washington to publish a full page ad in the leading newspaper in the Philippines demanding among others an immediate end to political killings that to date have claimed 840 lives of social activists.

Neoliberal economic and labor market policy, stagnating working income and continuing mass unemployment have withered the extent of employment paying into social security.. The next financing crisis of health insurance is pre-programmed.

NomadsLand.com – an internet video platform for social issue filmmakers and political satirists – has launched its Alpha website in its mission to offer alternative distribution for cinema with a social message.

A talk with Alyson Slator on the Global Reporting Initiative.. Not only the financial bottom line counts, but also the social and environmental ones.. Obviously it is very embarrassing if a company has been cooking its environmental books.

The iron fist of McDonald Douglas protects the soft fist of McDonalds. Militarism is the back side of capitalism. We must resist normalization of war and militarization of foreign policy. Love for life and the future can change priorities and perspectives.

* El Libertario, the voice of the Comision de Relaciones Anarquistas of Venezuela, analyzes the how and the why of the increasing state repression against the growing social discontent that belies the pseudo-revolutionary discourse of the Chavez regime.

For several months the town of Oaxaca, capital of the Mexican State of the same name, has been the center (of a movement) of important struggles which have undergone (or suffered) repeated attacks by the forces of repression (police, army and paramilitary) with many victims: at the end of November the toll was 22 dead and 34 disappeared.

Christmas is a revolution, a new beginning and a change of loyalties where weakness becomes strength and power is seen as blindness. Poverty of spirit keeps us from the idolatry of riches and power as ends-in-themselves.

Finance capital circling anonymously around the globe seeking only short-term profit must expect the resistance of the affected and of the church that turns to the affected. The question is who profits from globalization.

"Nothing is stronger than an idea whose time has come" (Victor Hugo).. Liberated from their existential worries, people could develop their talents.. A basic income could expand the efficiency of our society.

When we read the communiqués sent out by APPO [Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca / Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca] and by all the organizations, collectives and individuals that are today a part of it, including some anarchist companions that innocently follow these shitpile bourgeoisie and authoritarians, we honestly ask ourselves if we are talking about the same thing, or worse yet, if we even co-exist in the same country or if they are narrating to us what occurs in a distant galaxy.

The exclusion processes are actually the result of radicalized capital exploitation strategies.. In the last two decades capital has learned that low-wage zones can be enforced when the collapse zones are intimidatingly present.

On November 24th, 2006, I traveled to the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica, California, to observe and document how people were spending their time on “the busiest shopping day of the year,” the day after Thanksgiving. To narrow down the focus of my documentary, I decided to use photos of people and the bag or bags that they were carrying. The bag a person carries can lead to many assumptions about the person carrying the bag. In some cases, the owner of the bag may not be the person who carries the bag, though I believe the bags shown in Baggage are all carried by their new or longtime owners.

The interests of the working class are no longer defended by the dominant parties. On the background of this representation crisis (cf Gramsci), rightwing populist parties have electoral successes all over Europe.

Advent is a time of beginning as crisis can be a time to pause and gain new perspectives and priorities. We are called to be internation-alistas, to create a new language and a new mathematics. The world will be changed when people speak as Jesus spoke, in a way that scandalizes and attracts by its power

A recent news report detailing the effects of Globalisation – western economic/military expansionism by any other name – and the explosion of organised criminal activity in the Balkans was aired today on ABC Radio Australia. The primary item of interest dealt with the negative impact that Western Europe, including the UK, is experiencing as a result of the activities of Albanian, Turkish, Bosnian, Bulgarian and Serbian criminal syndicates. According to the report NATO’s intervention and the subsequent elimination of traditional regulatory forces and authorities in the region has facilitated the “explosion”.

Foreboding has hit the ranks of private equity firms; try as they might to unload vast amounts of funds (monetary value is inextricably linked to the movement of those funds) they have been unable to spend/invest at a rate that would sustain value let alone increase real profits! The ‘healthy figures’ reflecting increased acquisitions/investments are on paper only – it ‘looks good’ at the moment!

Interested in new ways to connect inspiring international social movements with the work going on in your community? Check out this new video featuring behind the scenes interviews and footage with Argentina's piquetero movements. The video is divided into short sections designed for use in workshops to spark conversation about the tactics, goals and strategies of your projects. And, it’s free.

The internationally practiced social cuts sold as combating unemployment have terrible social and economic effects. A grave psychic depression has already seized society. Since the world economy becomes ever more efficient, what will become of 80% w/o work?

Disintegration has three central dimensions and starts when access to the functioning systems of society becomes unstable.. Democratic substance can be lost when citizens are told they have no influence and are not needed.

Amidst escalating repression and political crisis, the Akbayan Citizens Action Party recently held its Third Regular Congress last October 14 and 15, 2006, at the Riverbend Hotel in Marikina City. With the theme "Ipaglaban ang Dangal ng Pilipino, Ipaglaban ang Kinabukasan Ngayon" (Claim the Future Now), Akbayan marked its more than eight years existence as an alternative national political party in the Philippines.

It’s interesting to see what issues can infiltrate and corrupt the Left. Usually the offenses are blatant— supporting the ‘war on terror’, electing ‘progressive Democrats’, calling for military intervention into a troubled region (Yugoslavia— and now Sudan). Sometimes though, more subtle topics can confuse and disorientate the Left, the most recent example being the sudden reemergence of the WWI Armenian genocide as a hot-button issue.

A though provoking exhibition featuring artwork created with social activism as its inspiration. The exhibit explores the inventive objects and strategies created by artists in response to the environmental, political and social issues of our time. The objects featured will include protest art meant for public display as well as tools for socially conscious living.

A well-known method of subjugation utilised by conquerors and rulers alike is, “divide and conquer”; this strategy applies equally in times of war and peace. It may surprise many but this method remains the principal means of social control in today’s western societies. The primary divisive structure today is the (separate, ‘closed-door’) nuclear family and the principal divided unit is the psychically isolated, competitive individual. [It should be noted that the ‘individual’, as distinct from the group, is a relatively recent social creation.]

Capitalist at the start of the 21st century set out to realize the utopia of a life without work-and cannot face this fact-because of its own inner pressures. Reducing working hours is crucial for lowering unemployemnt. Creating a social net is a precondition for sharing work

The social contract of modern times based on lifelong full-employment in paid work is broken.. We produce with Bill Gates and dis-tribute with Bismarck..After 200 years, we need a new social contract, a new reconciliation of work and income.

After five years of post 9/11 government, U.S. foreign and domestic policy continues to be dominated by the all-encompassing ‘war on terror’. Events have since exposed this so-called war for what it is: a gross propaganda campaign used to suppress civil liberties and launch global war.

SlideShow of photos taken on September 1st, 2006, during Oaxaca's 5th MegaMarcha which started in the community of San Felipe and ended at the zócalo in the center of Oaxaca City. Hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets and marched to demand the immediate departure of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz (URO), liberation for political prisoners, the cancellation of 70 government arrest warrants for people involved in the leaderless Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO, by its Spanish initials) movement and the desire for popular governance. (4:22 minutes / 6.5 MB)

Free trade is like heavyweight champion Mike Tyson climbing in the boxing ring against a half-starved unemployed from northeast Brazil..Without social justice, the republic is worthless..The world order of globalized pre-datory capitalism seems like cruel absurdity

It took only six years with Bush Jr. as President to give birth to a new generation of radical political activists, journalists, and commentators, whose main concerns are subjecting the insane policies of the President to exposure and condemnation; this, it seems, constitutes the foundation for nearly the entire realm of real political opposition in the U.S. The strategy here is limited to educating people about the destructive policies of the Republicans and hoping that in response, a protest or political movement will evolve powerful enough to either reform or displace those in power. Education of course, is absolutely crucial in transforming any dissident organization into an entity capable of action and results. However, by focusing only on the policies of the Republicans, without explaining the larger framework from whence they came, political education is greatly hindered, limiting the potential for effective action.

The major communication mediums of the world continue to bombard the public with images and descriptions of the Israeli-Lebanon conflict. The media works tirelessly to deliver our social consciousness. Today’s mass media maintains its status as the principal means of creating and sustaining social realities. The internet-based ‘independents’ lack real independent front-line resources and continue to rely on the mainstream for most of their information (much to their chagrin).

Middle EastHizballah, the Lebanese Shi‘i movement whose militia is fighting the Israeli army in south Lebanon, has been cast misleadingly in much media coverage of the ongoing war. Much more than a militia, the movement is also a political party that is a powerful actor in Lebanese politics and a provider of important social services. Not a creature of Iranian and Syrian sponsorship, Hizballah arose to battle Israel’s occupation of south Lebanon from 1982-2000 and, more broadly, to advocate for Lebanon’s historically disenfranchised Shi‘i Muslim community.

On Sunday, July 2, Mexican voters will elect a new president and a new Congress. The election takes place under conditions of mounting class tensions, as hundreds of thousands of teachers, miners and other workers have taken to the streets. None of the major candidates in the presidential election genuinely addresses the needs of the masses for decent-paying jobs, improved living standards and social programs.

Characteristics earlier ascribed to totalitarianism like control of the whole social life by the state could now be considered typical for modern democracies.. The whole dfemocratic life degenerates to a kind of market.

The following is a correspondence from Joaquin Cienfuegos, traveling throughout Mexico reporting on the struggles on the streets, the anarchist movement, the Other Campaign, the Zapatista’s, and the over all radical climate that is building. More updates to come. All messages are free for broad distribution and will be sent across the net. Please forward, and let this be an inspiration to a growing movement in North America towards internationalism.

Following the Czech parliamentary elections of June 2 and 3, the Green Party is now preparing to join the right-wing government of the arch-conservative Citizens Party (ODS).
The Greens have now entered an Eastern European parliament for the first time, with Strana Zelenych (SZ) receiving 6.3 percent of the vote. Clearly, the Green Party in Prague is beginning its political odyssey at the point it left off in Germany—as a governing party; but this time no longer in alliance with the Social Democrats, but instead with politically conservative and right-wing parties.

This call to a new LEFT party in Germany could give hope to all who yearn for social justice and structural/systemic corrections. While corporate profits and assets incomes set new records, wages, unemployment benefits and pensions are cut.

The author suggersts three reasons for the nerve-wracking calm in Germany: 1) objective and very cruel mass unemployment, 2) self-stigmatization and 3) people don't think there is anything to share. At the end he urgers: Be IMI-Instinctively Mainstream Ignoring.

The "reform" of the Social Security, mixing interests of pension funds and of the financial system, will be implemented in the next government - no matter who will occupie the chair of the president of the republic at "Palácio do Planalto"

The riots in French suburbs have always been detonated by police violence. The first of these riots happened in Lyon's suburbs, in Vaulx-en-Velin, a working class hub with Renault factories. Monstrous urbanisation, tens of thousands of workers who became jobless after corporate downsizing in the 1970s, inexistent public infrastructures, stigmatisation against people of foreign origin, schools that only proposed dead ends, heroin for the young and alcohol for their parents; voila the situation of this peripheral city forgotten by all until police violence led to the death of a young man. Police violence triggered this riot in 1990, and those that followed, all the way up to those of November 2005...

The guilty verdicts handed down by a Houston jury last week against former Enron chiefs Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling provide an opportunity to evaluate the significance of the company’s rise and fall within the context of American capitalism.
Accounts by jurors given after the verdicts were announced indicate they all agreed that the evidence against the two executives was overwhelming. It consisted mainly of testimony from over a dozen former executives, who implicated Lay and Skilling for their roles in defrauding investors and employees through various forms of accounting manipulation. The jurors quickly rejected the absurd position of the defense that Enron was basically a healthy company that collapsed into bankruptcy in December 2001 largely as the result of Wall Street machinations and negative press coverage.

Incendio Publicacion! - English and Espanol
New Bi-lingual Anarchist Journal focused on Latin America!
Incendio is...
An endeavor that some of us have taken up to increase communication with anarchists in Latin America, network, learn from their struggles, illuminate opportunities for solidarity actions, provide a forum for Latin American anarchists to share ideas and analysis, break down the language barrier, and make support efforts more possible.

Without capitalism, we could not live but we can hardly survive with it. Shifting social costs is the real core of capitalism..Politics is powerless toward the economy. Governments are forced to weigh the control of capital against positional deterioration.

The new typoe described by the sociologist Christopher Lasch in his book "The Blind Elite" is unscrupulously fixated on economic calculation.. He cannot feel a sense of responsibliity for the community of a city, region or country.

If Marx called Christian Socialism the holy water in which the reactionaries dip their fingers in to become holy, we in the First Quarter Storm Network (FQSN) call the Social Democrats led by Fr. Romeo Intengan and Norberto Gonzales as the vinegar that these reactionary brutes dip the wounds of the victims of their deadly terrorist killing campaigns. The latest pronouncement of Norberto Gonzales that the NPA hit squads are in Manila and are out to assassinate Gloria and some members of her cabinet (including him of course) is a dirty psy-war to set the stage for their death squads to kill leading progressive leaders like the Batasan 5 and other progressive leaders in Metro Manila. No doubt it is a cheap attempt to divert attention from the widespread public outcry nationally as well as internationally against the Arroyo regime’s bloody campaign which has already claimed the lives of hundreds of progressive mass activists.

Everyone feels we are on a wrong track because we do not have a social contract any more..The US is a terrorist state. The US acts with violence, crushes human rights and tortures Americans and foreigners.. As humanity, we stand at a crossroads.

It only took a day for the effect of the immigration protests to be known. On May 2nd politicians from both parties gave a wealth of interviews and speeches that clarified their positions: nothing had changed. In fact, many had remarked that the protest had a ‘backlash effect’, hardening and inflaming the already conservative opinions of Republicans, while dulling the already flimsy stance of Democrats. Trent Lott, in speaking for many on the right, implied that a massive deportation sweep during the protests would have been appropriate, given that “we had ‘em all in a bunch”.
On the other side of the isle, Diane Feinstein gave a more passive response to the protests, representing the unaffected character of most Democrats to the millions who appeared in the streets; the passionate outcry from the masses was referred to as ‘counterproductive’, since protesting does not “changes votes on the floor of the senate”— the latter point is certainly true, becoming more obvious as pro-immigration and anti-war protests continue to draw millions, but fall onto deaf ears in Congress. Demonstrations, boycotts, protests, or any other indication of public opinion has proven unable to sway the actions of either party. The façade of the two-party system is unveiling itself with impressive speed as social tensions near the boiling point.

The demonstrations, strikes and boycotts by immigrant workers in cities across the United States are an indication of a sharpening of the class struggle, both in the US and internationally.
Literally millions took to the streets May 1 in cities from Los Angeles to New York, Miami to Seattle and scores of towns in between. This mass protest movement, which has been building since March, is without precedent in both its size and its national scope.

In "1984," George Orwell warned that war would become a domestic necessity to divert the people from economic contradictions. Inequality may promote productivity but also undermines public spirit and social ochesion

The Bush administration, echoed by much of the mass media, seized upon reports released May 1 on the fiscal health of the Social Security and Medicare system to renew its demand for drastic cuts to these two major entitlement programs, thereby gutting retirement benefits and health care for older Americans.
According to the reports, issued by the trustees of the programs’ trust funds, the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund is projected to become insolvent by 2018, due largely to rapidly rising costs of American health care outstripping the payroll taxes that fund the program.
The report on Social Security indicates that this program will be able to pay out 100 percent of benefits until 2040, when the trustees predict the fund will be exhausted—a year earlier than previous projections. After that it would be able to cover 74 percent of promised benefits out of revenues until 2080, when it would decline to 70 percent.

A demonstration called by a broad alliance of anti-racist organisations has been called in Paris today, assembling at the Place de la République at 2 p.m.
The French government has launched a major racist offensive against immigrants. Despite the tenacity and extent of the protest movement against the First Job Contract (CPE—giving employers the right to fire young workers at will), which continued throughout February, March and much of April and witnessed days of action bringing up to 3 million university and high school students and workers onto the streets, the government is continuing its programme of reactionary legislation with the Immigration Bill. This bill, which will greatly increase the social and job insecurity of immigrants, is to be put before parliament May 2, without any disruption in its parliamentary schedule.

Throughout the history of the United States immigrant workers have been the victims of racism, exploitation, and in times of war, internment and violent attacks. While Spanish-speaking immigrants have had especially turbulent periods in the past, only recently have politicians made attempts at further marginalizing this already oppressed layer of society. Why these attacks are suddenly reemerging is something left unexplained in the mainstream media, and is thus an important issue to examine.

A series of opinion polls released in recent weeks have shown a massive increase in popular opposition to the Bush administration. The US president’s approval rating has dropped to barely one third, on a par with that of Richard Nixon on the eve of his resignation over the Watergate scandal.
The latest results published Thursday were from a poll conducted by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News, showing only 36 percent of respondents approving of Bush and his policies (compared to 48 percent a year ago). The same poll indicated that 67 percent believe that the US is on “the wrong track.”

The state has a social nature and isn't only a security and power state. If the state is reduced to a trough or waterboy for capital, the class compromise is dissolved and justice becomes an abstraction. Neoliberal myths legitimate the growing precariousness

"The earth was created by the assistance of the sun, and it should be left as it was... The country was made without lines of
demarcation, and it is no man's business to divide it..."
--Chief Joseph, NEZ PERCE

The election cycle of 2006-2008 has started, a time for all militants to run for cover. It will not be pretty and certainly is not for the faint-hearted. The Democrats smell blood in the water. The Greens smell that the Democrats smell blood. Various parliamentary leftists and some ostensibly socialists smell that the Greens smell blood. You get the drift. Before we go to ground let me make a point.

* Latin America is boiling with revolutionary potential these days that could redefine economics, politics and social relations. But sometimos things aren't always as they seem. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is widely seen to be at the center of Latin America's transformation by building a regional trade bloc through the creation of ALBA and Venezuela's membership in Mercosur to oppose U.S. dominance and its constant push for free trade agreements with Latin American governments.

Multilateral trade agreements-like the WTO-are not per se something good, especially when they only codify the rules of the rich. Until trade policy changes, massive changes of social hierarchies of power are necessary Th WTO is undemocratic and unjust.

Over 80 communities in Switzerland have insisted on stopping GATS-liberalization for social, ecological and democratic reasons.. In Europe, over 1000 communities have declared themselves GATS-free zones.

It’ no accident that many people are finding a rekindled interest in the writings of Karl Marx; the international assault of workers wages and benefits, continued warfare, and economic instability in general are causing a revival of the buried and slandered ideas of Marxism. Many of these concepts offer tremendous insight about the origins and workings of capitalism, and thus the causes of many of society’s current problems. Needless to say, involved are immense implications for anybody interested in becoming an activist. A “Marxist” is someone who accepts some of the key points about history and society first explained by Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels, and elaborated further by the writings of Lenin, Trotsky, and many others (Stalin, Mao, etc are Marxists in name only). Unfortunately, one cannot learn about these ideas by going to college, aside from the many biased and bastardized versions of the subject. The following is a brief explanation of some of the more important concepts of Marxism.

President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin announced yesterday that new legislation will be drawn up to replace the “First Job Contract” (CPE), which sparked a massive wave of protests and strikes in recent weeks.
Leaders of the trade unions, some student unions and “left” political parties immediately declared the shift marked a decisive victory for the anti-CPE movement and signalled their intention to halt further mass mobilisations against the government.

POVERTY ERADICATION
By Ruby BIRD
Rabinouchette@aol.com
Arab Countries
To improve people’s skills facilitation their entry into emloyment sectors through integrated capacity building schemes (programs on social skills, human rights and business skills). Were noticed increased illiteracy, high school dropouts, gender gaps, and school graduates with limited life skills. For example : series of direct training workshops for poor and deprives youth have been held in Egypt, Sudan, Lebanon and Palestinian Camps.
Cambodia, Indonesia, Nepal
Poverty undoubtedly has a women’s face. Two third of the world’s poor live in this region. The majority being women, two third of them are of schoolage. To help them to acquire appropriate technology-related knowledge and skills in order to help opening them the door to more job opportunities and increasing their status in the society. Girls and young women in those societies are a particular vulnerable group. Often, rights to Education & Training, Decent Work & Benefits of Science are denied to poor girls.
Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan
The highest concentration of the world’s poorest population, mostly having a female face. Need to break the poverty cycle of women in this region. Seek to demonstrate that it is opportune to focus on vulnerable adolescent girls caught in the process of pauperisation, it is crucial to go beyond the narrow perspective of considering them only as « people with needs ». Their rights have to be defended for the well being of all. To emphasize Education & Microfinance, Science, Communication & Information as well as Monitoring & Evaluation. Those components are closely inter-related.
Central Asia & Afghanistan
Continental climate with extremes of heat and cold, wet and dry. The region is prone to earthquakes. It is urgent to revive the traditional skills needed on the one hand to preserve the cultural heritage sites and on the other to build ecologically sound houses and public buildings affordable by all, including the poorest rural populations.
To promote the right to good housing and living conditions affordable to all sections of the population and adapted to the climate.
To promote the right to a substainable environment by using energy efficient construction and renewable energies.
To promote the right to good health by avoiding harmful modern construction materials and promoting natural materials.
Latin America
To improve the lives of artisan and small-scale mining communities in the fragile ecosystems of latin America. The common factor is often the predominance of vulnerable social groups and widespread poverty. Artisanak ans small-scale mining largely depends on local ans sub-regional economic links.
One of the most prinicpal objective is to improve social, economics and technical conditions, to reduce the environmental impact and poverty. To focus on Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Mining can cause environmental damages, to support the right to a healthy environment by improving methodologies for the biodiversity protection. By trying to diminish people’s health risks, we support the Universal Declaration of Human Rights « Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of works and to protection against unemployment ».
Young and female migrants in China and Mongolia
The integration of migrant workers in the urban social and economic fabric through services including training in life and basic skils, vocational training, career counselling, family planning, health & rights awareness.
The targeted group is young female migrants who suffer from double denial of human rights & double discrimination as female and as to promote migrants rights in the national, regional & local governements through :
- advocacy on the ratified international treaties
- legal assistance activities
- capacity building for officials
- awareness raising activities ans at preparing recommendations for new laws and regulations on working & living conditions of migrants.
Exploitative migration of women and children in Africa
Poverty is one of the main explanatory factors of human trafficking. This is a modern form of slavery. To fight against poverty by eradicating human trafficking, espacially that of women & children in Africa.
To organize awareness campaigns adapted to local cultures. Poverty, an extreme discrimination is combined with gender discrimination & lack of education. The fight against human trafficking is organized around :
- the right to formal education & informal education wich empowers potential victims against human trafickers
- right to health which is often lacking in trafficked victims, especially the one involved in sexual exploitation
- right to a decent work for removed from the modern form of degrading slavery that human trafficking represents
- right to security & justice, especially for the trafficked victims who try to escape from the human traffickers
- right to non-discrimination, gender & minority discriminations being factors of vulnerability vis-à-vis human trafficking.
Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Benin
To integrate a human rights approach in order to faster strategies & policies in the fight against poverty in Western Africa (Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Senegal). The reinforcement of human security & the respect for the human rights of local populations (particularly women).
Civil society actors & representatives of programms, funds & specialiszed agencies of the United Nations are regularly invited for meeting within the framework of projects.
UNESCO & the Millenium Development Goals (MDG’s)
- Goal 1 : Eradicate extremen poverty & hunger
- Goal 2 : Achieve universal primary education
- Goal 3 : Promote gender equality & empower women
- Goal 4 : Reduce child mortality
- Goal 5 : Improve maternal health
- Goal 6 : Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria & other diseases
- Goal 7 : Ensure environmental sustainability
- Goal 8 : Develop a global partnership for Development.
Arab Countries
To improve people’s skills facilitation their entry into emloyment sectors through integrated capacity building schemes (programs on social skills, human rights and business skills). Were noticed increased illiteracy, high school dropouts, gender gaps, and school graduates with limited life skills. For example : series of direct training workshops for poor and deprives youth have been held in Egypt, Sudan, Lebanon and Palestinian Camps.

Since journalists influence the political and social climate in the subject of migration, they should show greater sensitivity toward racist exclusion..Integration is not a one-way street but can only succeed when we create the prerequisites and grant equal rights.

How? Never exposing the reigning bigoted assumptions of the privileged and resulting meta policies against we, the "stupid" masses, for one. Article quotes from Noam Chomsky and the little known Christopher Simpson, author of Science of Coercion.

"In those times, people were energized, and they were more intellectual. People were processors of information, whereas today you don't see a lot of that." -- David Sanchez, former leader, The Brown Berets

The middle class cannot do what corporations do..German corporations pay little corporation tax; their share amounts to 2.6% of all taxes. For decades, they even received more subsidies than the profit taxes paid in Germany. Corporate enrichment in the US leads to state deficits and social cuts.

In capitalism, production is for the market instead of for satisfying needs..The postulate `Work as cheap as possible and at the worst possible conditions' leadsus back to the 19h century. We are far removed today from the watchword More Time for Living and Loving'.

Our friends from abroad continuously ask us to explain our views about the current situation in Venezuela. This reply is based on two recent texts by the editing team of El Libertario, already published in their entirety in the internet (in Spanish), and from which we extract our main points.

About ten million Filipinos are now scattered in the U.S. and around the world, chiefly as exploited migrant labor. Meanwhile, 85 million Filipinos--with the exception of a tiny privileged minority--are sufffering and resisting the current repressive regime in a rapidly deteriorating neocolonized social order. The Philippines has one of the most durable and vibrant revolutionary traditions in the whole world--the first Asian people to revolt against Western colonialism. 4.1 million Filipinos died opposing U.S. domination in the Filipino-American War at the turn of the last century. Today Filipinos are engaged in a popular democratic revolutionary process against U.S. imperialism and its local agents. Can overseas Filipinos contribute to the radical transformation of a world afflicted by the atrocities and terrors of global capitalism?

The new social and national demagogy entirely comaprable to German fascism conjures away the social question from mass consciousness..Rightwing ideologists know that the war goal and war are irrational.

Radical's radical comments on the widespread way in which so-called mental "health" ideology has integrated itself into the very psyches of those claiming to see the value of dissenting from all manner of corporate hold on people. Question: is psychiatry and formal therapy, corporate? anti-copyright.

A critical analysis of the inherent contradictions in the current regime in the Philippines would reveal the logic of irreversible fascist decay. While objective conditions have polarized and sharpened the divisions within the ruling bloc, the subjective forces of national democracy and anti-imperialism have not fully organized and united to deliver the decisive blow. Meanwhile, the U.S. and its agents are working behind the scenes to pick a successor to Arroyo and re-consolidate its neocolonial stranglehold. But will millions of concerned Filipinos allow the U.S. and its "guns, goons and gold" to determine again our collective fate and national destiny? Filipinos in the Philippines and around the world will have to decide as the Arroyo cabal, convulved with death-pangs, lashes out at everyone within reach.

In Germany and the US, the corporation is often stylized as the suffering servant. The market is made sacrosanct; all problems are defined as interferencs with the market. Profits soar and investments fall. Corporations pay increasingly less tax.

...1984 has come to pass, both chronologically and in the Orwellian sense. Americans are "liberators" in Iraq. Opponents of this "peace initiative" are "doubleplusungood". Unchecked by the judiciary, the NSA electronically trolls for perpetrators of "crimethink". Pundits and the "liberal media" (owned by a handful of monolithic corporations despised by people with the values which many define as liberal) have become the Ministry of Truth for the Party...

On page 321 of the budget proposal, you see the privatization costs..$712 billion is the seven-year total (from 2010). There are plenty of ways to fix social security besides offering private accounts as a substitute for part of the basic benefit.

* In Caracas, Venezuela between the 23rd and 29th of January 2006, 10 local socio-political organizations offered an alternative forum and critique of national politics in response to the World Social Forum. The result was a smaller-scale event but self-directed and reflective of current self-organizing capacity. The alternative forum was independent, self-managed and borne out of years of experience of organizing in the Venezuelan context.

Whenever more profits are produced with fewer and fewer workers, income should be separated from work. Every citizen should automatically receive a part of the money cake to buy goods produced without his help and find his or her own fujlfillment.

[Note: By the time this story reaches it's reading audience during the month of February, please be aware that an Injunction has just been filed in Federal Court in an effort to stop the Oakland Housing Authority from violating Federal Law.]

The Scandinavian model could help us find our way to social compromise and true security through investments in education and apprenticeships. Has our wealth blinded us to alternatives and encouraged our altered state of paralysis, insecurity and fear?

Today's internationalization of capital is part of a drastic crisis process.. In the 1970s, several hundred so-called multis existed worldwide. Today there are 60,000 multi-national businesses with 50 million employees.

The economic system of production we live in is called capitalism or the free market. We are supposed to be fortunate because we are free to starve to death amidst abundance. This form of social organiztion has not existed for all time and need not exist in the future. The first step in eliminating it is accepting this simple idea.

º In this interview with the mexican alternative news group La Rosa Negra (LRN-ci), the CRA from Venezuela explains the importance of the Alternative Social Forum, which will take place in a few days, and comments about their activity as an anarchist group.

Martin Luther King, Jr fought racism, and used his powerful voice to oppose the Vietnam war. There is no better way to comemorate his life than to bring an anti-war, social justice message to the Martin Luther King Jr. Day Parade.
Martin Luther King, Jr fought racism, and used his powerful voice to oppose the Vietnam war. There is no better way to comemorate his life than to bring an anti-war, social justice message to the Martin Luther King Jr. Day Parade.

The truth will set us free but the truth is a process, not a cudgel. Discovering the Bible in the Bible, the kerygma or proclamation of Jesus, is vital to disarm the literalists, Litera-lism can repress mystery, uncertainty, diversity, engagement and interdependence,

Under today's conditions, the option for a life in abundance for all people necessitates preserving the natural foundations of life.. God's reign has a transcendental dimension that Jesus compares with a treasure in a field.

* A member of the group promoting the Alternative Social Forum explains why the World Social Forum (WSF), taking place in Caracas during January 2006, is another attempt by the Chavez government to impede the autonomous development of social struggles in the country.

The anniversary of the death of the Philippines' national hero Jose Rizal this Dec. 30 affords us the occasion to reassess his work, particularly in the context of ongoing fierce class war in the Philippines between the oppressed, impoverished majority and the few privileged landlords and politicians bought by global capital. This is taking place at a time when the Philippines is being re-colonized by the U.S. as the world's imperialist hegemon. Would Rizal want the country partitioned to greedy transnational corporations and their national elites in the current terrorist war against peoples of color in particular? These reflections hope to provoke a re-thinking of what it means to be a Filipino with the Philippines in permanent crisis, using Rizal as a point of departure, especially in the light of its citizens becoming an embattled diaspora--more than ten million OFWs as exploited domestics and contract workers around the planet, while the country's rich natural resources, cultures and traditions are wasted by foreign profiteers of globalizing capital supported by local comprador parasites currently headed by the corrupt Arroyo regime. "O where is the hope of the motherland...."?

The Social Security defeat shattered GOP unity long before the indictment of Tom DeLay and the public's sharp turn against the Iraq War. it defined core differences and demonstrated the power of an organized progressive mobilization that informs citizens and arouses their opposition.

The fianncial markets, the fifth branch, are probably the most important markets today. Many remain excluded from this time- and space compression. Most people are barred from the advantages of globalization like greater mobility and improved communication

Finland has the highest productivity in the EU and the lowest rich-poor differential. Inequality is not a panacea. According to a 2004 study, the Scandinavian model is the best protection against increasing income differences and poverty rates.

The best-known economist of the world doubts that shifting services to india and buying cheap goods from China bring advantages to Americans when the income of workers falls through foreign competition. The rich North will lose its monopoly profits under the conditions of globalization.

Anarchism is a political theory which aims to create anarchy, "the absence of a master, of a sovereign." [P-J Proudhon, What is Property , p. 264] In other words, anarchism is a political theory which aims to create a society within which individuals freely co-operate together as equals. As such anarchism opposes all forms of hierarchical control - be that control by the state or a capitalist - as harmful to the individual and their individuality as well as unnecessary.

Given the enormous advances in productivity, radical reduction of working hours is an overdue demand. However working hours are actually lengthened.. Power relations are hidden behind the distribution structures.

Reductionist worldviews promise "order" in the mixed-up social consciousness.. Psycho-analysis has coined the term "regression" for this process of escapism..Psychic regres-sion involves withdrawal to a state of original immediacy, an earlier less complex stage.

* From El Libertario, # 44 September-October 2005, voice of the Comision de Relaciones Anarquistas, exposing the show of international mega-ceremonies the Chavez regime uses to try and acquire revolutionary legitimacy by means of petro-dollars and verbosity.

"The political realm has largely uncoupled from the everyday life of people.. The wheel of social development was turned back.. The social state is degenerating into a security state. Governments have abandoned protection of citizens.."

Uncontrolled capitalism proved to be a completely wrong track toward the end of the 19th century. The governing church of work does everything so people only have time and strength for two things in life: work and job-hunting. The 30-hour work week could be a life-giving goal.

"How can the state finance itself in times of worldwide competition without damaging the national econmy? How can it find the old strength without creating new poverty?.. There is no system-conforming way out of this vicious circle.."

"The neoliberal policy of the last years is entangled in a deep legitimation crisis. Unemployment is not lowered through social cuts..Dismantling democracy and increased repression go along with militarization.. Another world is possible..."

"Perpetual growth is not possible in nature or anywhere else..Globalization, the free market with its absolute competition protected by the WTO agreements doesn't have anything to do with fair competition...A global network of resistance is developing.."

There is now an enormous amount of scholarly evidence and expert testimony that a) clearly demonstrates the official 9/11 story is a sham, and b) supports the millions of New Yorkers who, according to a recent Zogby poll, believe that top US officials "consciously" allowed the attacks to happen and that we desperately need a new investigation now.

"The civilized foundation of cooperative human life is furtively undermined by the capitalist form of organizing society.. Rational objectives often capsize into social irrationa-lity.. Unemployment is a form of violence.."

Take the Streets and Resist the Capitalist War Machine on July 8! Come to the West Coast anti-war and anti-capitalist mass convergence, July 6-8 of 2005 in San Francisco, in solidarity with the mobilization against the Group of Eight (G8) summit in Scotland.

For those interested in looking beyond biased mainstream media news on Venezuela, there aren’t many better options than hearing about the nation’s ongoing social and political revolution from a key advisor to President Chavez.

Social logic is more future-friendly than profit logic. With the end of cheap oil and the dollar crash on the horizon, a basic income would make the future human rather than predatory
Social Darwinism, winner-takes-all, hire-and fire and right of stronger could be dinosaurs.

The demand for a basic income attacks one of the basic pillars of the capitalist society:the notion that only persons who work may eat. Every person on this earth has a right to share in socvial life and wealth only because he or she exists as a person.

If you like peace the notion of silent violence may be uncomfortable - disturbing even. But the elements that make violence what it is; fear, pain, danger, and death are all contained within deprivation. The only difference perhaps is that one is a result of aggression and the other a result of ignorance.

From the middle of the seventies, the interest rates exceeded the real growth rates. This made it even more attractive for owners of capital to invest their money in the financial markets rather than the real economy.

The ecnomic conditions in which the utopia of Aristotle or John M Keynes could become a real utopia objectively exist. We live under our real economic possibilities.The end of the work society is not the end of work but the transition to a really free society of citizens.

All member states of the European Union will soon have to agree to or reject the project of European Constitution. A European campaign has just been launched in order to contribute to develop a large movement against this project of constitution. This Sunday the French citizens are voting.

Venezuela is one of the few states whose government is taking new paths against the global trend to political stagnation.. No one has the illusion that the people and the political system can change from one day to the next but the way is clear.

WASHINGTON — Defenders of Social Security charged this week that a “means test” on Social Security as proposed by President George W. Bush would inflict huge benefit cuts for 70 percent of recipients, clearing the way to destroy the system vital to Americans’ economic security.

Thirty years ago today Vietnam fell...into the hands of the Vietnamese. Actually, it was taken by the Vietnamese after decades of struggle. Cuba was there to support Vietnam all the way. A discussion of Vietnam and Cuba's links to it.

We run the risk of making economic success absolute. However economicsuccess is a means to an end..Economic success is only legitimate when it improves the living conditions of citizens..The social foundations of democracy fade when poverty, unemploy-ment and social insecurity increase.

Participation in modern societies is only possible when one has an income.. The pro-posal to grant a basic income to every person independent of gainful work results from human rights and from pragmatic-economic considerations.

SANTIAGO, Chile — It was with a heavy heart that I arrived in Chile. Compañera Gladys Marin, president of the Communist Party of Chile (CPC), had died March 6 of a brain tumor. She was 63. Communist and workers party representatives came from around the world to pay tribute to this revolutionary heroine. My party — the Communist Party USA — asked me to represent it at Marin’s funeral.

The Bush Social Security “reform” proposal is so ridiculous, and John Bolton is such a jerk, that you have to wonder: could there be a reason Bush is proposing such stupid things? Maybe they are meant to be outrageous, to keep us ineffectively spinning our wheels while the real dirty business gets done.

A basic income could heal our fragmented society caught in work fanaticism and work fetishism while work disappears..A basic income could change social attitudes and goals and give real meaning to the human rights to life and participation.

The LA Greens will host accomplished writer, activist and Greenpeace co-founder Rex Weyler for a lecture and discussion in honor of Earth Day on April 20, 2005. Author of the newly published "Greenpeace: How a Group of Ecologists, Journalists and Visionaries Changed the World," Weyler will speak about keeping our commitment to the Earth, organizing and fostering social and political action.

In this 1970 interview in the midst of the Vietnam aggression, Marcuse insists that affirmation of life is the distinction between offensive and defensive aggression. The phy-sician cutting off a leg and a pilot ordering passengers are defensive aggression.

Another devel,opment model should be realized based on an energy-saving way of life and democratic controls on natural mineral resources, particularly drinking water. Military bases of foreign countries should be closed.. Another world is possible.

He’s a schill for the President, collects full Social Security benefits and a $200,000 salary, stands to collect another $100,000 a year in federal retirement benefits, and he wants to cut your Social Security benefits! Why should anyone listen to a guy with his lousy trackrecord as an economic and stockmarket forecaster anyway?

Compromise approaches to “saving” Social Security that involve voluntary private accounts on top of the current program are not going to help low-income workers. If Congress and the President really wanted to help protect low-income retirees, they’d end the legal theft of pension “vesting” so workers got pension contributions for every working day of their lives.

The author describes the development of human rights: the first generation-civil andpolitical rights, the second generation-economic, social and cultural rights and the third generation-collective rights.

This seemingly genuine study turns out to be a carefully engineered piece of propaganda intended to give the green light to manditory testing. The result would be billions of dollars in sales for these multi million dollar machines.

The real reason for U.S. capitalism's attempt to create anti-French sentiment is the French workers' stand for the 35 hour week at a time when U.S. and global capitalism is trying to normalize going backwards

Kucinich added that while much attention has been focused on private accounts, price indexing, once understood by both the media and the American people generally, will create such an uproar that it will jeopardize not only the Administration’s plans, but could create great political risk for members supporting the plans.

A revolution in thinking against mechanical models of action and knowledge has occurred in the past 30 years..The new thinking about knowledge and society understands non-linear, non-instrumental and non-rational dimensions.

Like a man shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater, like a charlatan trying to create a run on a bank, the president is trying to create a panicky run from Social Security among younger people with this new WMD-like campaign of lies.

The economy exists for people, not vice versa. The economy needs a framework offering orientation to economic actors and showing the limits of the tolerable. This framework is not a limitation of freedom but the necessary condition for success..

The advantages of part-time work must gain general approval.. When the just distribution of work makes headway, the state and the economy will be freed from a considerable part of social expenditures and cuts in individual living standards will be balanced.

Attention Southern Californians! The Animal Liberation Coalition is holding a SHAC 7 Benefit Concert on December 4th to support and raise awareness about the SHAC 7 and the Campaign to Close HLS (Huntingdon Life Sciences)!

"There is a very narrow concept of strength in this country, says David Paletz. Strength is something between Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwartznegger and has a clear connection to militarism, killing animals and chopping down trees with the axe.."

Anglo-Saxon capitalism is an unbridled capi-talism whose profit logic overrules all social and environmental interests. Rhine capitali-sm has a social net so workers are not redu-ced to cost factors. "The Cold War against the social state leaves..another republic."

"Millions of jobs are missing in Germany.. This unsocial policy of redistribution from bottom to the top is pursued by the govern-ment and mainstream parties to assure extra profits for the mammoth corporations.. No new jobs will be created.."

"A view of the person underlying the reforms should be opposed by the peace movement: the person as an isolated being competing unscrupulously for better living conditions in a state that sees its task more in establishing peace from above.."

The big tech-stock bubble of the 1990s was starting to sag just a little bit in the spring of 2000, when I sat down for lunch with a former coworker named Phil in a diner in midtown Manhattan. After a lot of catching up, we got onto what was still the big topic for all kinds of people who should have known better: the stock market.

Dr. Raul Molina, member of the Board of Directors of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA and former Coordinator of the National University of Guatemala's Truth Commission, will deliver a talk about the political situation currently existing within that country.

THERE WILL BE NONE FOR YOU!! For at least the fourth time this year, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan issued his warning that the White House and Congress need to come up quickly with a plan to trim the Social Security and Medicare benefits that 77 million baby boomers are scheduled to receive when they retire.

"The whole financial regime between the country, territories and communities is out of order. The communes were sacrificed on the altar of tax reform. Enough money is there.. Lengthening working hours in a time of weak growth and high unemployment is absurd.."

Join us in the beautiful foothills of Appalachia to network, brainstorm, and discuss social change through building a positive movement toward a free and responsible society. We will focus on practical alternatives to problems associated with power-based governments, institutions, and internalized systems of oppression.

Un-manageable
Saturday July 24th 2004
at
Flor y Canto
6 PM
www.florycanto.org
A discussion on the ways in which institutions have been using discipline and normalization as tools to mold the individual into docile and manageable bodies. The primary target of control is no longer just our body but also, if not primarily, our 'soul' ...

"The goal must be redefined beyond goods production and abstract labor, beyond the market and the state.. The great step of debt cancellation occurs when the burden can no longer be endured. The new finance capita-lism is a bubble and debt capitalism.."

USC students unveil multimedia project
http://www-scf.usc.edu/~jour556/
2004-05-06 01:13 EDT | 2004-05-07 05:13 GMT
- Heather Somers, Managing Editor
A group of graduate journalism students at USC Annenberg presented their
multimedia reporting project Thursday. The project, titled Making it in LA,
examines the lives of six Los Angeles residents and the social issues that
impact their lives. The students reported and produced the project in
conjunction with a class on online journalism taught by Visting Professor
Elizabeth Osder and Lecturer Robert Berger.

US has military programs, bases or spies in every country in Latin America Only Cuba and Venezuela restrict US official activities. We want this entire military-espionage regime out! We won’t pay you anymore debt peonage and we take back all of our resources, our industries and our power

Alan Greenspan got a lot of people talking about Social Security last month by pointing out that future funds won't be enough to fund future obligations. What a surprise! What is far more surprising, however, is how much the continued fallout exposes our collective ignorance about Social Security.

Management guru, Peter Drucker: "If you find an executive who wants to take on social responsibilities, fire him. Fast." chair of the libertarian Cato Institute, William Niskanen: says that he would not invest in a company that pioneered in corporate responsibility.

When this essay comparing Hitler's rise to power with Bush, and the tactics of the present GOP with the 1930s Nazis and Stalin's communist regime was first published in July, 2001, I was the recipient of a flood of hate mail and even a couple of death threats from militant rightwingers. But the comparison hit home: the article has been been circulating all over the world, reprinted in at least five languages. Unlike the lame, even bizarre comparisons rightwingers try to make between Clinton, Dean, et al. and Hitler, the similarity between Bush's regime and the rise of the Nazis is REAL and has evoked a shock of recognition in readers - or, as the title says, a "Chilling Déja Vu."

The winter holidays sometimes seem more like a time of greed for many charity and social programs than a time to redouble efforts to aid the poor. The poverty pimps put their hand out and look like every good and helpful program out there. So how can you tell whom to support? And if you work or volunteer in a program how do you know if it or some the people in it deserve your support?

The demand that the global justice movement should produce a detailed “vision” or blueprint of a future post-capitalist society is today most forcefully made by Znet. I will seek to present an opposite view in this article

"Neoliberalism starts from a negative.. assumption that every person prefers him- or herself or circle. Therefore corruption is inevi-table. This development can only be prevented by reduction of the public sector and the absolute self-control of the market."

The consequences for the nation have devastated the dream of a Republic. The notion that the federal government has an obligation to be an activist instrument for social engineering, became ingrained in the distorted consciousness of a guilt ridden public. The country of today is a hollow shell of individualism. The quest to secure community has required the surrender of personal ascendancy. The standard of distinctive achievement has been transformed into a culture of hopeless interference.

The right of decent private citizens to personally possess, transport, and responsibly use arms without government interference is the ultimate freedom and the main pillar supporting all other liberties. Few cultures have allowed their general population access to weapons, the tools of power, to the same degree as the United States. Instead, most societies have restricted the keeping and bearing of arms to a select few power brokers and their agents, often resulting in oppression on a grand scale.

The essence of the New World Order (NWO) or world management system is that it is management by social engineers, rather than government based on a written constitution. How you are affected by this management system depends on what the social engineers decide the system should do for you and require of you.

Sally Lieber, D-San Jose, points to Wal-Mart employee hand-outs about social services like Medicaid, food stamps and temporary assistance as proof that the retailer uses state and federal tax dollars to supplement "poverty" level wages and benefits.

Last month, prominent clerics and academics issued a statement warning against calls for equality and increased rights for women, saying such efforts aim to make Muslim women more like "infidel" Western women.

"Imperial overreach threatens Europe's economic resources and military arsenals already strained to the limit.. The emperor and his people should quickly understand that the Imperium Americanum cannot subjugate the globe." Translated fr German

This conference report was published in: Monthly Review Newsletter, Summer 2003.
"Neoconservative hawks should be seen as frustrated outsiders involved in a desperate gamble to shore up declining US power by throwing legitimacy to the winds."

Ridiculous as sodomy laws may be, there clearly is no right to privacy nor sodomy found anywhere in the Constitution. There are, however, states' rights -- and Texas has the right to decide how to regulate sex using local standards.

Posted on behalf of Mind Freedom. Mental health reform activsits are trying to bring to light the quiet state of terror that exists in the so called field of psychiatry today. Educate yourselves about how psychiatrists are an alternative to the police and prisons as a form of repression and social control:

"Paul Lafargue spoke satirically about the first sinister acceleration thrusts of early industry: "All individual and social misery comes from a passion for work. O laziness, be merciful with your endless misery!: O laziness, you are the balm for the pains!"

This plan is so obvious at this point that it is hard to believe because it is happening so fast and the Democrats and even conservative non- neo-con Republicans don't realize what Bush and his neo-con buddies are up to.

The present situation promises to be a period of growing social and political polarization in Brazil, Ecuador, Peru and Argentina. Before the end of 2003 we are likely to see a new alignment of political and social forces from below and perhaps some "regime changes" from above or from below.

Revolutionary thinkers have been saying that the age of vanguardism is over for most of a century now. Outside of a handful of tiny sectarian groups, it's almost impossible to find a radical intellectuals seriously believe that their role should be to determine the correct historical analysis of the world situation, so as to lead the masses along in the one true revolutionary direction.

"If the peace movement, globalization critics and unions unite their struggles, sand can be thrown in the gears of neoliberal globalization. Then changing direction will be possible." Translated from the German

The general conclusion of the survey, which is dubbed the "Israeli Democracy Survey" and will be conducted every year, is that Israel is basically a democracy in form more than in substance, and that it has yet to internalize fully the concept of democracy.

This statement will be presented to the "Iraq and the Global Peace Movement: What next?" conference in Jakarta, Indonesia, 19-21 May and at the peace and anti-war movements events during the G8 in late May.

"The conquest of Africa and large parts of Asia was not morally justified by anything. Only peace is morally justified. Today social Darwinism appears in the guise of Anglo-Saxon capitalism..Ecology and pure market ideology are in conflict.." Translated German

"The conquest of Africa and large parts of Asia by invading European forces was not morally justified. Only peace is morally justified..Today social Darwinism appears in the guise of Anglo-Saxon capitalism..Ecology and pure market ideology are in conflict."

Introducing the Howling Dog megasite: radical writing, art, poetry by iconoclastic visionaries. These dogs never learned to fetch, roll over, or lay down--but they did learn to speak. Get dangerous, get discovered ...

[Editor: John Gershman, Interhemispheric Resource Center
(IRC) Editor's Note: This piece was commissioned under
the auspices of the Project Against the Present Danger.
Foreign Policy In Focus www.fpif.org]

When they find out that the oil profits will, of course, be going into the pockets of the U.S. oil robber barons, they will be even more pissed off...After all, these are the Americans who are liberating Iraq's oil fields, and in America, there is no such thing as 'developing the oil for the benefit of all the people' and, despite George W. Bush's socialist talk, the people of Iraq will be robbed blind and then left with nothing, just like Africa after colonialism...

After 9-11 Bush remarked, 'it looks like I hit the trifecta' and someone was so offended by his out of place remark that they leaked it to the media. Note that a 'trifecta' connotates something that you gamble on. Bush's August 6, 2001 briefing memo was titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike U.S." Sometimes the mainstream media can really surprise a person, as the piece quoted here demonstrates...

I do not neccessarily agree with everything Dr. Makow has to say. I sometimes find him a trifle sexist. However, this is provative food for thought so decided to throw it up on the wall for people to think about.

"War has changed into a structural and permanent part of the global hegemony.. In the name of the liberalization of the market, the population sees itself robbed of its elementary rights. Every area of life and nature is for sale.." Porto Alegre Jan 2003

"State tax receipts rapidly decline through the globalization of capital. Heavily indebted states, provinces and communes have become economic crisis factors instead of being active as masters of crisis. They sell off cheaply the state table silver."

This paper gives a theoretical discussion of the source and methodology of the social construction of consciousness. The first section introduces the piece. The second establishes the relationship between "interests" and "consciousness." The third describes growing inequality in the US. The fourth develops the structural source of consciousness. The fifth details the interlocking nature of politics and economy in the US. The sixth section discusses how our consciousness can be constructed. The final section offers some solutions.

Democratic socialism as a transformational process could remedy the social coldness and ecological blindness of neoliberalism and its total absolute market. This article is translated from the German in: Utopie kreativ 2000.

The history of humanity teaches that people have always resisted when the social inequality was outrageous and blatant. The increase of criminality in the South as in the North is caused by the despair of the poorest in view of worldwide injustice.

National Release:
Peace Demonstrators in US & UK Take Message to the Pumps: NO WAR FOR OIL
Day of Action at Over 100 Gas Stations Calls for Peace, Security, and Environmental Protection via Reduction of Dependence on Oil

How dou you know when the future lands on top of you
Plug & Play Social Event: Sevilla, Spain
An autonomous experimental event dealing with ICTs, video, music, urbanism and social networking, live from an abandoned high speed train station

The dominant Israeli discourses on nature and the environment act as elements that contribute to framing the public's conception of their social space. These environmental constructs, which partially stem out of, and partially become reintegrated into the Zionist nationalist discourse, are utilized by different social elements as a legitimation for both the creation of demarcated open 'natural' spaces, and the enforced retention of their 'pristine' state.

I was the guest host of KPFK's the Morning Show on X-Mas day; and I did a short tribute to Joe Strummer in the show's first segment (roughly from 7:05 to 7:15am). Below is a rough draft for what I said on the air.

The welfare state regressing since 1974/76 or since 1982 must be reformed, democratized and decentralized.. What is central is refuting the neoliberal positional logic, reestablishinig solidarity and reorganizing and extending the welfare state

Social conflicts are always conflicts around terms and definitional power..Whoever has definitional power over what is reality and what is realpolitik dominates ideological semantics. Translated from the German

The DIALECTIC and the SOCIAL in PROUDHON
Join some of the works and articles, published and unknown, that the author of these pages had chance to write in these last sixteen years.
http://www.franciscotrindade.com
1- The DIALECTIC and the SOCIAL in PROUDHON
2 - INTRODUCTION TO THE FEDERATIVE PRINCIPLE OF PROUDHON

"The 1994 UN Development Program proposed a world social charter with the goal of building a society where the right to food is as sacred as the right to vote..and the right to development is a fundamentaql human right
Brigitte Hamm is a professor in Duisberg.

Please check our manifesto and subscribe it if you fell it expresses what you feel. Or even best... come to Porto (portugal) by the end of November and stay for a few days. Please feel free to ask for english updates to our mailing list

We are publishing this document so as to inform and ask for your support. This concerns a very important matter - the imprisonment of worker and social fighter Yannis Serifis and the wider repression by the state in Greece. Follow the link to sign for the release of Y. Serifis and against the greek terrorlaw: http://www.yserifis.org/solidarity.php

The arrests of the political activists in South of Italy are really grave. It's urgent to give an strong and united response. Isole nella Rete is proposing a netstrike.
Over the skin of the activists from the South is the future of all the political activism.

The ascension of Alvaro Uribe Velez to the Presidency of Colombia signifies the apogee of the violence and a new war surge that threatens to overflow the Colombian borders and involve the countries of the region. An analysis by the editor of Ecuador’s Opción Magazine:

Scary Pig Cabin Lonely People Need Good Will Too, to remember when tricking or treating this Ween. Trick, I didn’t proof read, your treat, but how much Nabeg-ness is on IMC. And that is the question, personally in the costumes of social constructions and maybe identity when and where they create bad or ill will. This is Dave ‘Min-like musing for a Indigenous or Nabeg Ween for everybody’s global tribal ‘anti-globalizm/anti-war’ door knocking.
One reference article follows.

Money replaces the `cosmos' as the unifying social characteristic. Every pack of wolves is more socially organized than free enterprise persons..The little monsters should be tamed by the enormous monster"Leviathan".
The state share has increased everywhere.

The following is written by the Maoist political economist Raymond Lotta. It is excerpted from a larger discussion on http://2changetheworld.info where Ray posted a series of comments called "Socialist planning vs. Market Socialism."

The following was written by political economist Raymond Lotta -- as part of a longer analysis of "Socialist Planning vs. Market Socialism." It was posted as part of the debate over revolutionary strategy in the General Discussion forum of http://2changetheworld.info

World leaders, activists, and business elite gather in Johannesburg to decide the fate of the planet in what is shaping up to be merely another clash between globolizatiion proponents who want to impose free markets and privatization as the path to sustainable development, versus environmental and social justice activists who say the neoliberal model is inherently unsustainable.

Globalization is supposed to make communication easier. But when the leaders of Ecuador`s social movements tried to deliver a letter critiquing neoliberal globalization to Summit of the Presidents of S. America, they were arrested, roughed up, and their giant letter was destroyed. This highlights the need for international support for the massive protest planned at the 7th summit of the Free Trade Area of the Americas in Ecuador in October.

Beware! The Maussians Are Coming!
This article by David Graeber discusses the concept of the gift economy, an idea first explored by Marcel Mauss in his descriptions of the Kwakiutl of British Columbia. He describes how the historical reality of such economies refutes many of the assumptions made by neo-liberal economists about the historical development of economic systems.
Also discussed are contemporary groups (such as the MAUSS group in France) who take their inspiration from such findings to attack and dismantle the philosophic basis of capitalist economic theory.

The RISE UP 2002 Conference has started. Hundreds of participants collected at Perloff Quad on UCLA campus this morning for the opening plenary; and are presently filling the classrooms of both Royce and Rolfe Hall in the first series of workshops. The conference has been organized by the Coalition of Imokalee Workers (CIW)as part of the Taco Bell Truth Tour.

REPORTERS ARE NEEDED TO COVER THIS GREAT EVENT!!!
VIDEO, AUDIO, PHOTO, and PEN/PAPER are encouraged!!!
Environmental Justice Workshop entitled Ethnic Communities, Social Justice, and the Environment: Making the Connection on Saturday March 2, 2002 at UCSC’s Oakes College room 105 starting at 11:30 until 3:30 pm.

Between The Lines' Scott Harris spoke with John Cavanagh, director of the Institute for Policy Studies, who attended the World Social Forum and discusses the deliberations and action plans that came out of the Porto Alegre gathering.

The racist prescription for perfecting the human race, which is presently having a major revival, is the doctrine of "survival of the fittest" guided by the ethic of "Social Darwinism"! In this story the author points to epidemics of this racist idea now at work in America and what can be done to overcome the problem.

PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil - Noam Chomsky arrived here for the World Social Forum (WSF) and immediately blasted the World Economic Forum (WEF) in New York as power-hogging, anti-global, and linked to "crude and vulgar" exploitation of the September 11 attacks.

A second government in a term of ten days falls. The social outbreak reflects a mobilization capacity that seemed forgotten in Argentina, in a social outbreak carried out by very diverse sectors of the society, without a defined leadership, something that is disturbing to power.

* Translation of the situation and events in Argentina.
* The unequal redistribution of money in favour of the banks.
* People protests in different provinces including the capital city in where the police is taking an active and authoritary action.

There is no crisis today, and everyone on the commission knows it. According to their own numbers, Social Security can pay all promised benefits for the next 37 years. And the shortfall over the whole 75-year planning period is small relative to our national income (less than three-quarters of one percent). While the commissioners may say something different, its actions confirm the facts: there's no need to deal with Social Security anytime soon.

Conservatives have been attacking Social Security since 1936. They've grown more sophisticated since Republican presidential candidate Alf Landon. called it a "cruel hoax...unjust, unworkable,...and wastefully financed," but they haven't grown more honest. A quick guide to some major lies, written several years ago, with only the links updated.

Conservatives has attacking Social Security since 1936. They've grown more sophisticated since Republican presidential candidate Alf Landon. called it a "cruel hoax...unjust, unworkable,...and wastefully financed," but they haven't grown more honest. A quick guide to some major lies, written several years ago, with only the links updated.

Outrageousness of July 22, 2001 brutal police raid of Genoa Social Forum, NONVIOLENT main umbrella of G8 countersummit. Dozens injured, hospitalized, and still detained. World outrage. The outrageousness of the July 22, 2001 combined raid of Genoa Social Forum, Italy Indymedia, and Radio Gap is sinking in. Dozens of brutal injuries. Unprovoked beatings of people to unconsciousness. Pools of blood everywhere. Witnesses galore. Mainstream politicians and press as witnesses.

The latest reports really flesh out the brutality of the raid July 22, 2001 of the Genoa Independent Media Center and the Genoa Social Forum. Photos, detailed reports, videos, etc.. Even some of the mainstream press is getting it right. The outrageousness of the raid is sinking in. Dozens of brutal injuries. Unprovoked beatings of people to unconsciousness. Pools of blood everywhere. Witnesses galore. Mainstream politicians and press as witnesses.

Though it may be hard to imagine in America, in Italy, communists, anarchists, ravers, punks, hackers and artists have seized vast, abandoned factories, forts, boarded-up schools and churches and transformed them into cinemas, concert halls, bars, squats and art galleries. Far from being scabies-infested scum pits with gutter punks spray-painting the names of their favorite bands on the walls, Italy’s social centers are among the country’s most vital cultural institutions.

Between The Lines' Scott Harris spoke with labor historian Jeremy Brecher, author of "Globalization From Below: The Power of Solidarity," who discusses the challenges ahead for the growing global social justice movement.

Voting doesn't create social change without the larger context of a social movement. But social movements have created enormous social change over the centuries, and voting has played a vital role bringing about this change.